Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
---|---|
Original title | El libro de arena |
Translator | Norman Thomas di Giovanni |
Country | Argentina |
Language | Spanish |
Genre | Fantasy, horror, science fiction |
Publisher | Emecé Editores |
Publication date | 1975 |
Published in English | 1977 |
Media type | |
Pages | 181 |
The Book of Sand (Spanish: El libro de arena) is a 1975 short story collection by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In the author's opinion, the collection, written in his last days — and while blind — is his best book. [1] [2] This opinion is not shared by most critics, many of whom prefer his other works such as those in Ficciones (1944).
Referring to the collection, Borges said:
I have wanted to be loyal, in these exercises of a blind man, to the example of Wells: the conjunction of a plain style, sometimes almost oral, and an impossible argument. [3]
The first edition, published in Buenos Aires by Emecé, contained 181 pages. In Madrid it was edited that year by Ultramar.
Borges opts for an epilogue to this short story collection, different from the cases of his previous collections The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) and Artifices (1944) (later republished together in Ficciones ), which had a prologue. Regarding this, Borges begins The Book of Sand's epilogue by saying: "To prologue unread stories is an almost impossible work, as it demands the analysis of plots one should not anticipate. I prefer, thus, an epilogue." [4]
The book contains thirteen short stories (original titles in italics): [5]
Among this collection are: The Other, the first story of the collection, in which the protagonist (Borges himself) encounters a younger version of himself (similar to his later short story August 25, 1983), The Congress, on an utopic universal congress (seen by critics as a political essay), There Are More Things, written in memory of H. P. Lovecraft, on an encounter with a monstrous extraterrestrial inhabiting an equally monstrous house, [6] Undr, on the maximum poetic synthesis, [7] The Sect of the Thirty, on an ancient manuscript that tells of the characteristics of a sect that equally venerated Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot, [8] A Weary Man's Utopia (according to Borges, "the most honest and melancholic piece in the collection"), [4] The Disk, on a one-sided coin, and the titular work The Book of Sand, on a book with infinite pages. [9]
Evaluating his work, Borges said:
If of all my stories I had to save one, I would probably save "The Congress", which at the same time is the most autobiographical (the one richest in memories) and the most imaginative. [10] [11]
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, as well as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph, published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring themes of dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and majorly influenced the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
"The Library of Babel" is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format and character set.
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.
"The Book of Sand" is a 1975 short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges about the discovery of a book with infinite pages. It has parallels to the same author's 1949 story "The Zahir", continuing the theme of self-reference and attempting to abandon the terribly infinite, and to his 1941 story "The Library of Babel" about an infinite library.
"The Lottery in Babylon" is a fantasy short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. It first appeared in 1941 in the literary magazine Sur, and was then included in the 1941 collection The Garden of Forking Paths, which in turn became the part one of Ficciones (1944).
"The Immortal" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in February 1947, and later in the collection El Aleph in 1949. The story tells about a character who mistakenly achieves immortality and then, weary of a long life, struggles to lose it and writes an account of his experiences. The story consists of a quote, an introduction, five chapters, and a postscript. "The Immortal" has been described as "the culmination of Borges' art" by critic Ronald J. Christ.
"The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" is a fantasy short story written in 1935 by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his autobiographical essay, Borges wrote about "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim", "it now seems to me to foreshadow and even to set the pattern for those tales that were somehow awaiting me, and upon which my reputation as a storyteller was to be based."
Ficciones is a collection of short stories by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges, originally written and published in Spanish between 1941 and 1956. Thirteen stories from Ficciones were first published by New Directions in the English-language anthology Labyrinths (1962). In the same year, Grove Press published the entirety of the book in English using the same title as in the original language. "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" originally appeared published in A History of Eternity (1936). Ficciones became Borges's most famous book and made him known worldwide.
Labyrinths is a collection of short stories and essays by the writer Jorge Luis Borges. It was translated into English, published soon after Borges won the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett.
This is a bibliography of works by Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet, and translator Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986).
"The House of Asterion" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story was first published in 1947 in the literary magazine Los Anales de Buenos Aires and republished in Borges's short story collection The Aleph in 1949. It is based on the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur and is told from the perspective of Asterion, the Minotaur.
"The Form of the Sword" is a short story by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in July 1942 in La Nación, and included in the 1944 collection Ficciones, part two (Artifices). The first English translation appeared in New World Writing No. 4, in 1953. In the story, an Irishman, now living near Tacuarembó in Uruguay, recounts his experiences in the Irish War of Independence and how he received the large scar on his face.
"The Disk" is a 1975 short story written by Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges. It appears in the collection The Book of Sand.
"The Sect of the Phoenix" is a short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, first published in Sur in 1952. It was included in the 1956 edition of Ficciones, part two (Artifices). The title has also been translated as "The Cult of the Phoenix."
Avelino Arredondo was an Uruguayan assassin of Basque origin.
Shakespeare's Memory is a short story collection published in 1983 that collects the last stories by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, which had been published in diverse mediums, such as the national newspapers La Nación and Clarín. It was published three years before the author's death.
"The Congress" is a 1971 short story by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The story is on an utopic universal congress and is seen by critics as a political essay.
"There Are More Things" is a short story written by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges in 1975. It was first published in the short story collection The Book of Sand, as the collection's fourth entry. The story tells of the encounter the narrator has with a monstrous entity inhabiting an equally monstrous house. It bears the dedication "In Memory of H. P. Lovecraft" and accordingly holds many parallels with Lovecraft's stories, employing similar plot devices. The title alludes to Hamlet's lines "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy".
Jorge Luis Borges and mathematics concerns several modern mathematical concepts found in certain essays and short stories of Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), including concepts such as set theory, recursion, chaos theory, and infinite sequences, although Borges' strongest links to mathematics are through Georg Cantor's theory of infinite sets, outlined in "The Doctrine of Cycles". Some of Borges' most popular works such as "The Library of Babel", "The Garden of Forking Paths", "The Aleph", an allusion to Cantor's use of the Hebrew letter aleph to denote cardinality of transfinite sets, and "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" illustrate his use of mathematics.
Historia de la eternidad is the first essay book published by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, in 1936.