Games with Time and Infinity

A master of the short story genre, Borges has never written a novel, and his actual fictional output easily fits into a moderately sized hardcover edition -- and yet so does the Torah, those pesky five books that form the written roots of some of the major Western religions. Not a writer of characters and emotions, Borges is at home in a universe of philosophy, speculation, and Big Ideas, and the sheer density of his thought cannot be measured by the length of his stories. Borges says more in five pages than most writers could put forth in a trilogy, dazzling the imagination with explorations of time, space, language, identity; and even the very nature of reading and writing itself.

The following two books, "Labyrinth" and "Everything and Nothing"might show Borge's short stories well. Because the experienced Borges enthusiast already knows of all these books, and undoubtedly has their own views and opinions, I have designed this section as an aid to those just beginning to explore the literary labyrinths of this Argentine genius.