Ficciones
Jorge Luis Borges's Ficciones is the cornerstone collection of twentieth century short fiction, gathering seventeen stories that helped invent what we now call magical realism, postmodernism, and the literary fantastic. Originally published in two parts in 1944 and 1956, the book includes The Garden of Forking Paths, in which a Chinese spy in WWI England discovers a labyrinth that is also a novel of branching time; The Library of Babel, where humanity inhabits an infinite hexagonal library containing every possible book; Funes the Memorious, about a Uruguayan boy whose perfect recall becomes a kind of paralysis; and Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, in which an invented encyclopedia begins to overwrite reality. Borges writes in compact, scholarly prose filled with false footnotes, fictitious authors, and recursive paradoxes, treating philosophy and theology as raw material for plot. The result is less a story collection than a private cosmology, an argument that fiction is the only honest way to describe a universe whose laws might themselves be a story.
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about Ficciones
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Seventeen short stories from the Argentine master, including the infinite library, the man who dreams another, and the encyclopedia entry for a country that nobody can prove ever existed.
Ficciones is a 1944 short story collection by Jorge Luis Borges, considered one of his most important works alongside The Aleph. It includes The Garden of Forking Paths, The Library of Babel, and Funes the Memorious.
Ficciones is short but intellectually dense. Borges's stories pack philosophical and literary references into a few pages. Most readers find rewards from rereading the same stories. The English translations by Andrew Hurley and others are widely available.
Ficciones is 196 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Ficciones takes most readers 3 to 4 hours to finish.
Ficciones is a standalone novel by Jorge Luis Borges, not part of a series.
Ficciones is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.