Ficciones

Name: Ficciones
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges · 1944

Technically a story collection, but Borges invented postmodern fiction's essential moves here: the infinite library, the forking path, the labyrinth as universe. Pynchon, Calvino, David Mitchell all descend from these pages. Published in 1944 in Buenos Aires, it rewired what fiction could think about.

The case against

on the translation
“Some of the translations are incredibly rough and ready.”
Times Literary Supplement · 21 September 1962
on starting with Tlön
“it is a disorienting place to start.”
Pepper Stetler · Ploughshares, 2021
on the density
“Each story requires slow reading, maybe even rereading”
a book blog
on the missing plot
“most of these Ficciones lacked a plot, or had only the tiniest thread of one.”
four stars · a Substack review