Ficciones
First published 1945 · English · 174 pages
- Novels
- Science fiction
- Philosophy
Ficciones is a collection of short stories that brings together two earlier books, The Garden of Forking Paths and Artifices. The stories read like essays, reviews or scholarly notes, and they invent books, writers, encyclopedias and entire worlds. Recurring ideas include endless libraries, lotteries that govern life, memory without limit and the strange shapes time can take. Some stories borrow the form of the detective tale. The book is short, but it is dense with puzzles and imagination. It is often seen as the best starting point for new readers of Borges, and it helped reshape modern fiction.
Quotes
The truth is that we live out our lives putting off all that can be put off; perhaps we all know deep down that we are immortal and that, sooner or later, all men will do and know all things.
That history should have imitated history was already sufficiently marvellous; that history should imitate literature is inconceivable....
What one man does is something done, in some measure, by all men. For that reason a disobedience committed in a garden contaminates the human race; for that reason it is not unjust that the crucifixion of a single Jew suffices to save it.
"Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions," murmmured Lönnrot. "Like Christianity," the editor put in.