Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings (Twentieth Century Classics) [Paperback]

This must be the best selection of writing by the mind-bending Borges; much of his work reflects his Latin-American background which can make it a little less accessible - and can be slightly heavy going sometimes to a middlebrow like myself, but Borges, bless him, does not waste words. Where some writers will stretch an idea to fill a novel, Borges will condense it. There are more mind-bending ideas in this one book than most writers come up with in a lifetime, and each one will make you see the world in a strange new light. If a story loses you, no great loss... move on to the next one and your perseverance will be rewarded with interest. If you don't read the whole book at least read 'The Lottery in Babylon', which stuns you into questioning your perception of society - 'The Zahir'-which will chill anyone who has ever had a tune stuck in their head - and my personal favourite, 'The Library of Babel', which will strike a chord with anyone who has ever been daunted by the idea of ever hoping to make sense of the universe. The stories I could get my head round were utterly brilliant - I daresay I'll say the same about the rest of them one day.

I am embarrassed to admit that this was my first proper exposure to Borges - though I had seen, and was intrigued by, many fragments of his works quoted by other authors, which is what eventually prompted me to pick up this book. The experience has turned out to be a mixture of joy and disappointment.

Allowance has to be made for the fact that the English translations in this collection are not those revised and approved by Borges. The sparks of stylistic brilliance occurring every now and again in this book made me wonder how different an impression I would get from the authorised translations (which, sadly, cannot be published any longer).

The majority of the stories introduce metaphysical ideas dressed as fiction, which is something that I do not care for - though this, of course, is a matter of personal preference. Some stories appear to be merely jokes of philosophic or literary nature while some closely (perhaps too closely) remind the style of Poe or Bierce. This quality may or may not be an artefact of translation; however, I certainly feel that the central premise of 'The Secret Miracle' is essentially the same as that of 'An Occurrence on Owl Creek Bridge' by Bierce. I recognised this even though I only ever read the latter story some 40 years ago, in a Russian translation - so the similarity must be real.

On the other hand, there are some true gems in this book - for example, 'Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius', whose intense poetic beauty transcends the metaphysical content, or 'Averroes's Search', which I find quite disturbing.

In the latter, a Moorish scholar writes, "with slow sureness, from right to left", a commentary on Aristotle's 'Poetics' (accessible to him only as a translation of a translation) and struggles with the meaning of the words 'tragedy' and 'comedy' that keep cropping up in this work but are not to be found in any other book in his library. The scholar tries to console himself with the thought that what we seek is often nearby, and later that day attends a learned gathering at a cleric's home. There, a theological and literary discussion takes place and a famous traveller tells, by way of an entertaining account, about a large painted house he visited in China: the house had balconies on the inside and was full of people watching other people who were wearing crimson masks and doing strange things. The whole thing is dismissed as lunacy by the listeners, including the scholar - who thus misses the revelation and remains in the dark about the meaning of the puzzling words in Aristotle: theatre and drama are unknown to his medieval Islamic world.

In the final paragraph of 'Averroes's Search' Borges reveals that his intention was "to narrate the process of a defeat ... of a man who sets himself a goal which is not forbidden to others, but is to him". Borges then ponders over his own difficulty with imagining Averroes based on the scraps of information about him found in various sources. The multi-lingual versions of people's names, book titles and place names scattered around the story also point to the difficulty of penetrating Averroes's way of thinking and understanding the world in which he lived; this mirrors the difficulty experienced by Averroes in the story. Fittingly, an extra layer of the same nature is added in the translation by the fact that the title of the Spanish-language original (La Busca de Averroes) cannot be adequately rendered in English because it has a dual meaning - "the search of Averroes" and "the search for Averroes" - and both interpretations are relevant to the story. Another aspect of the sublime irony of the whole situation is that the Western world largely owes its re-discovery of Aristotle to Averroes, who is also known as Ibn Rushd. Moreover, his commentary was read by medieval European scholars as the Latin translation of a Hebrew translation - not unlike the way in which Averroes reads Aristotle in the first place according to Borges (it is not known whether the real Averroes was able to read in Greek or Syriac).

The description of a failure to understand in 'Averroes's Search' is so compelling that it got me thinking: could it be that I miss the point of some of the stories in this collection in a similar way? I reckon that I will have to return to them one day and try again - and perhaps this time read these stories in the authorised translation if I can get hold of it.

Borges combines fiction, fact, science, imagination, and philosophy like no other. The stories in Ficciones demonstrate his unparalleled depth, each needs to be read several times to determine what transpires. He often allows for several levels of interpretation, for example 'The Garden of Forking Paths'; which perhaps serves as the best first story for one new to Borges, they will quickly learn just what they have sank their teeth into. Borges shatters such accepted notions as the linear nature of time, the limits of reality, the difference between fiction and history. He is simultaneously toying with modern man's universe and offering metaphysical theories. I don't think he is as appreciated in the US as in South America, where his influence is pervasive. Must read stories include "Theme of the Traitor and the Hero", "Three Versions of Judas" and "The Library of Babel"; indeed the entire book. His stories are even more profound in Spanish than English. This book is a must for any fan of literature.