Collected Fictions - Jorge Luis Borges (1999)


"The story 'Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth,' roughly in the middle of this marvelous new collection of stories by Jorge Luis Borges, is as good a place as any to start an appreciation of one of the most remarkable writers of our century. A king flees the ghost of his vizier, whom he has killed, taking refuge in a labyrinth he builds on the moors of Cornwall. But the ghost, or what seems to be a ghost, catches up with him, and the king is murdered within his own hiding place. It is not one of Borges's greatest stories, but many of the familiar elements of his work are here: arcane knowledge, characters that emerge from some combination of mythology and scholarship, images of labyrinths, a lightly satirical Homeric tone, blood and vengeance, the blending of murder and metaphysics, and an interplay of appearances and apparitions in which reality and illusion are almost indistinguishable. ..."
NY Times: Savoring a Borges Blend of Imaginings
complete review
amazon: Collected Fictions
Open Culture: An Animated Introduction to the Magical Fictions of Jorge Luis Borges (Video)

2009 August: Jorge Luis Borges, 2013 May: Jorge Luis Borges - 1, 2013 October: Borges: Profile of a Writer Presents the Life and Writings of Argentina’s Favorite Son, Jorge Luis Borges, 2016 May: Borges and $: The Parable of the Literary Master and the Coin,2016 October: The Library of Babel (1941)

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