Borges Marathon, Part 20: The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
Treachery and heroism blur in this meticulously plotted short story by Jorge Luis Borges, with noticeable echoes from history and literature.
Borges Marathon, Part 19: The Shape of the Sword
With shifting narrators and a big twist at the end, this short story by Jorge Luis Borges tackles themes of violence, vengeance, the clash of theory and practice, and how we judge others.
Borges Marathon, Part 18: Funes, His Memory
My thoughts on Funes, His Memory, aka Funes the Memorious, a short fiction by Jorge Luis Borges about a man with an infinite memory.
Borges Marathon, Part 17: The Garden of Forking Paths
A pacy wartime thriller mixes with an abstract meditation on the forking paths of time and fate in a classic short story by Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges Marathon, Part 14: The Lottery in Babylon
How do you explain the effects of random chance? Borges invented an all-powerful Lottery governing all possible events in life to help us think through it.
Borges Marathon, Part 9: Et Cetera
This section in A Universal History of Iniquity includes several interesting fragments, some of which could provide the basis for interesting stories but are not really developed.
Man on Pink Corner: Borges Marathon, Part 8
In this story, Jorge Luis Borges takes us into the colourful world of knife fights and gangsters on the streets of old Buenos Aires. It's a compelling portrait and a beautifully constructed story—with a powerful twist in the final few…
Borges Marathon, Part 7: Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv
One of the fun parts of working my way through the Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges is trying to understand where the boundary lies between fact and fiction. In Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv, as far as I can…
April 2021 Reading Roundup
Spring is here: storks on the electricity poles, calves in the fields, and suddenly a million things to do around the house and garden. Full-time travel around the 50 countries of Europe was, in some ways, less consuming of time…