Fictions

Pocketbok. Jupiter/Calder. 1st uppl. 1965.

Gott skick. It is perhaps only in Britain that Borges's reputation as the greatest living short story writer is not yet fully realised. When a jury of distinguished authors gave him (jointly with Samuel Beckett) the first Prix International des Editeurs at Formentor in 1961 it came as a great surprise to a British literary establishment which had never heard of him. The present volume, a selection of Borges's major work, originally published in England under the Spanish title Ficciones, was the first work by the great Argentinian writer to appear in Britain. Borges points out that the essence of most novels can be told in a few minutes and that therefore, it should not be necessary to give the whole book, but only a description or review of, or essay about, the book in question. This volume might be said to consist of a considerable number of highly condensed works of fiction, existing in the author's imagination before the stories or "essays" were written.
Jorge Luis Borges was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires, educated in Europe and is known as the father of Ultraismo, the Spanish form of expressionism. Originally concerned with social problems, Borges's later work shows an increasing interest in metaphysics and the occult, and he employs many of the techniques of detective fiction and of the great novelists of the early 20th century, especially James Joyce.
Although he has totally lost his sight, Borges continues to write and to consolidate his reputation as probably the most condensed and economical among modern writers, with a very personal mystique, whose brilliance is rivalled only by his originality.