Product Description
This remarkable book by one of the great writers of our time includes essays on a proposed universal language, a justification of suicide, a refutation of time, the nature of dreams, and the intricacies of linguistic forms.Borges comments on such literary figures as Pascal, Coleridge, Cervantes, Hawthorne, Whitman, Valéry, Wilde, Shaw, and Kafka.With extraordinarygrace and erudition, he ranges in time, place, and subject from Omar Khayyam to Joseph Conrad, from ancient China to modern England, from world revolution to contemporary slang. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The Mirror of the Enigmas
I love Borges' short stories, especially the early ones with their labyrinths and paradoxes; these alone would show him as one of the greatest and most original writers of the 20th century. But (in my humble opinion) the essays in this book are even more remarkable.

Borges was a man of books and ideas; his stories are also woven of books and ideas. He seemed to have read everything: at least everything no-one else had read. His mind ranges over fiction, poetry, history, philosophy and theology with apparent omniscience. These essays are written in the almost inhumanly meticulous style made famous by the stories; all are very short, but so packed with meaning that every sentence is quotable.

More astonishing ideas can be found here than in any other book I have ever read. A writer creates his own precursors: we would never have known that some writers are "Kafkaesque" if Kafka hadn't come along. Shakespeare began as someone; then he became everyone; and then he became no-one: and God went through the same trajectory. John Donne's "Biathanatos", on the surface a justification of suicide, actually argues that Jesus committed suicide: and hence that the entire Universe was created solely so that God could commit suicide.

These are random examples. Sometimes Borges seems to tease. Because he's read Everything: mystics, Kabbalists, Chinese historians, Fathers of the Church, Gnostics, long forgotten philosophers: sometimes you're not sure if he's not making it up. Was there an obscure Danish theologian who went from justifying Judas as a noble soul who played a necessary part in the Divine plan of salvation, to believing that Judas was himself God? Or is this Borges' erudite and disturbing joke at our expense?

These essays were crazily ahead of their time: writers and thinkers have been drawing on their riches ever since. But Borges can also take authors who were already old-fashioned, G.K. Chesterton, H.G. Wells, Bernard Shaw, and reveal in them mysteries and depths you would never have dreamt of. Supreme literary conjuror, Borges effortlessly produces the most extravagant marvels out of the plainest of hats. Intelligent, wise, startling, learned beyond belief: I don't have the words needed to do justice to this book. There is now a large "Collected Nonfictions", but it adds little. Most of the best is in this slim book.

An improbable man of unconceivable knowledge
Jorge Luis Borges is in a class of it's own. No other Spanish writer (or any other writer in any other language, for that matter)has reached the sublime plateau in which he moves so effortlessly. This is a different book; a book on books. A book of literary analysis, metaphysical quizzes, philosophy, all of it wrapped-up in Borges's inimitable writing style. Borges is a Rennaisance man; the vastness of his culture is a thing of the past, and the ability to bring it all together into play when writing, something reserved only for the most gifted of men. The incredible width of his imagination makes his early blindness a mere andecdote; Borges, blind before reaching 50, shows that he can see through knowledge and imagination much more than most of us can see through our healthy eyes.
His piece on Nathaniel Hawthorne is a masterful analysis of the great American writer. His New Rebuttal of Time is a metaphysical masterpiece.

This book, although complex, is a must for those who want to understand Borges's literature. His dealings with time, laberynths, hyperbole, everything that is shown in the shape of his short stories, is evident here and helps to connect the narrator with the philosopher.

MF

Borges!
Borges is at his best in this stunning collection of essays." A meeting in a dream" is a masterpiece, a beautiful essay on love by one known more for being metaphysical than romantic.The rest of the essayssparkle as well.WOnderful! ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The master of making great literature of great literature
There is no Borges like Borges and Borges is his only Borges. In these tales one becomes acquainted with a mysterious mixture of concepts and conjectures, of footnotes and findings which combine to move the mind and soul to pure love of reading.The title story alone ' The Aleph' contains in it a hint of containing everything, and yet the finding of it leads us not only to the Kabbalah but to a certain very specific cellar in the imagination of Borges. All the games and tricks of mind cannot conceal from us how wisely and wonderingly this great man has read and written.
Who reads this book touches the work of one of the great literary geniuses of mankind. The pleasure is all the reader's. ... Read more

Product Description
The incomparable Borges delivered these seven lectures in Buenos Aires in 1977; attendees were treated to Borges’ erudition on the following topics: Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Nightmares, Thousand and One Dreams, Buddhism, Poetry, The Kabbalah, and Blindness.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

Hello, Mr. Borges
Like most prominent authors of the last century, Jorge Luis Borges made his fair share of speeches.

But "Seven Nights" is no dry collection of stiff monologues. Instead, Borges explores seven different topics over the course of seven intricate, insightfully beautiful speeches. His exquisite prose and conversational style just show us what was obvious all along, that he was a master of the written word.

On the surface, Borges explores seven basic topics -- a careful theological and artistic study of Dante's "Divine Comedy," the nature of nightmares, the origins of "A Thousand and One Nights," the history and qualities of Buddhism, the power of poetry, the Kabbalah (the traditional one, not the Hollywood cult-lite), and finally the question of his own ever-growing blindness.

But Borges isn't just interested in the history and current status of these various topics. He seems a lot more interested in common facets, which intertwine together when these speeches are compiled -- he studies the nature of God, the nature of love, and the power that words -- even everyday ones -- can hold over our minds and souls.

In fact, it's a credit to Borges that he doesn't just ramble on about himself, or the creative writing process. Quite honestly, it would be boring. What's insightful about "Seven Nights" is that these speeches reveal the mind that fuels his otherworldly prose -- we have masks, dreams, classic poetry, legends of Gautama Buddha, and many other things. Seen through these speeches, the world is a magical place.

And he injects a lot of unusual thought into these studies, such as his ruminations that "if Dante had always agreed with the God he imagines [in the Comedy], it would have meant that this was a false god, merely a replica of Dante himself." And he lets his gorgeous prose flow unchecked, such as the horrible, beautiful dream of Wordsworth by the sea -- you'd think it was another of his stories.

If there's a flaw in this slim little volume, it's that the "Nightmares" speech tends to be rather fragmented, with Borges' dreams and accounts breaking into the main narrative.

In fact, he really reveals a great deal about himself over the course of these "seven nights" --his nightmares, his thoughts on his own blindness, his love of words. It tells you a lot about him -- he wasn't a snob, and he was unafraid to homage writers from Plato to Poe, from the nameless storytellers of the Middle-East to G.K. Chesterton.

"Seven Nights" must have been a thrilling experience for those who heard Borges lecture on these topics, and had a little of his magical realism exposed in the real world. Definitely worth checking out.

Thanks to the other reviewers on the Amazon page
Thanks to the other reviewers on the Amazon page for reminding me about the contents of this book. It is one of the many I have read through the years which I do not hold most of in mind, but reminded of recall to a certain degree. ' Seven Nights' impressed me as lesser Borges. The Dante lecture, the lecture on nightmare, the lecture on Kabbalah seemed less essential than Borges words on poetry which too seemed to me only one definition among many .This book of course has those Borges qualities, tremendous learning, capacity to connect between different books and worlds, irony and humor, a certain kind of dignity , the great great love of Literature which inform all of Borges work.
In a way this work leads me to another thought about books. It is that there are writers we love so much that the discovery of an additional even minor work of theirs gives us great pleasure even though it cannot equal their greatest work.
So 'Seven Nights'. And again thanks to other Amazon reviewers who helped me with this review.

Seven Remarkable Lectures Worth Seven Readings
I am fascinated by the genius of Jorge Luis Borges. "Seven Nights" is a short collection (121 pages) of seven lectures given over seven evenings in the summer of 1977 in Buenos Aires. Borges was almost fully blind and spoke informally, without notes, as was his usual style. He exercised his great memory with skill; he shifted effortlessly across literary genre, across the centuries, across languages, occasionally making unexpected connections. I almost believed that I was present at his lectures.

Each lecture can stand alone, but references to prior topics abound.

I first encountered "Seven Nights" some years ago. Having just read Dante's Inferno for the first time, I was having difficulty articulating the powerful impact that Dante's great work had made on me. In his first lecture, "The Divine Comedy", Borges provided the words.

He says, the Middle Ages "gave us, above all, the Divine Comedy, which we continue to read, and which continues to astonish us, which will last beyond our lives, far beyond our waking lives."He describes the joy of reading Dante's work as a narrative, ignoring - at least during the first reading - the extensively documented literary and historical criticism. "The Commedia is a book everyone ought to read. Not to do so is to deprive oneself of the greatest gift that literature can give us."

"Dreams are the genus; nightmares are the species. I will speak first of dreams, and then of nightmares." So begins lecture two. Borges takes us on a journey through history, literature, and poetry in search for understanding of that so common, but so unusual event, that we call dreams.

"A major event in the history of the West was the discovery of the East." And so begins lecture three on that great work that defines the mystery that is Arabia."These tales have had a strange history. They were first told in India, then in Persia, then in Asia Minor, and finally were written down in Arabic and compiled in Cairo. They became The Book of a Thousand and One Nights."

Borges lectures travel an elliptical orbit around his topic, sometimes approaching directly, other times looking outward, away from his stated subject. In his lecture on poetry (number five) he comments on literature in general: "A bibliography is unimportant - after all, Shakespeare knew nothing of Shakespearean criticism. Why not study the texts directly? If you like the book, fine. If you don't, don't read it. The idea of compulsory reading is absurd. Literature is rich enough to offer you some other author worthy of your attention - or one today unworthy of your attention whom you will read tomorrow."

His other lectures, "Buddhism", "The Kabbalah", and "Blindness", are equally intriguing.In once more rereading "Seven Nights" I found myself again astounded by Borges, by his seemingly inexhaustible knowledge of literature, by his capability to forge unexpected connections, and by his provocative statements. He has obviously given considerable thought to his conclusions, although Borges is anything but dogmatic. I enjoy a quote from a concluding paragraph in NIghtmares. "We may draw two conclusions, at least tonight; later we can change our minds."

Whether you are familiar with Borges or not, I highly recommend "Seven Nights". Borges is simply without peer, and I do not expect to change my mind later.

Excellent Borges essay collection
The seven nights in question are off the cuff essays Borges delivered in Buenos Aires in the late seventies, written down by fans.He clearly did this sort of thing very well, and the regret one has at not being able to appreciate the performance at first hand is vitiated by these excellent transcriptions.Dante, the Thousand and One nights, Buddhism - all dealt with in exquisite thoughtful prose.All quotations are from memory (Borges was by now completely blind) and all conclusions paradoxical, lapidary, Borgesian.A stocking filler.Go ahead, treat yourself.

Nuevas noches argentinas
Estas conferencias que Borges pronunció a lo largo de siete noches diferentes -¿o idénticas?- son una muestra acabada de su maestría verbal.
Quienes hemos leído estas deliciosas apreciaciones borgeanas volvemos a ellas cada noche que necesitamos regocijar nuestro éspiritu. (Entonces, es como comer con champagne) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Mostly reprints; new material is lightweight
Penguin's publication of this book is strange.Most of the book comprises reprinted material appearing in other Penguin books, including Selected Non-Fictions, Collected Fictions, and Selected Poems.Only five pieces are new translations, but they are short and forgettable.Borges's widow wrote the introduction, but it is forgettable, too.Even grouping selected pieces together under the rubric "mysticism" makes little sense - most of Borges's work could be placed in that category.And the reader would have more fun doing that kind of grouping for himself.One star for the book's concept and lack of originality, but five stars for Borges, for an average of three. ... Read more

Product Description
In a 1935 magazine article, celebrated author Jorge Luis Borges explained why he chose Mary Sinclair s short story Donde su fuego nunca se apaga as the most memorable story he d ever read, while he mentioned 11 other of his personal favorites. Inspired by Borges statements in the article, this anthology gathers an array of magnificent short stories by authors such as Allan Poe, Conrad, Kipling, O Henry, among others.
Description in Spanish: No sé si soy un buen escritor; creo ser un excelente lector o, en todo caso, un sensible y agradecido lector. Esta frase de Borges, citada infinidad de veces, sigue reencontrando su sentido inequívoco El 26 de julio de 1935, en una sección de la revista El Hogar titulada Un cuento, joya de la literatura, Borges explicaba por qué elegía el relato de May Sinclair Donde su fuego nunca se apaga como el cuento más memorable que había leído, al tiempo que mencionaba otros once. (ver reproducción en la columna derecha) Esa declaración ha inspirado la presente antología, que reúne un variado grupo de magníficos relatos. ... Read more

Product Description
"Cuando la Universidad de Belgrano me propuso dar cinco clases, elegí temas con los cuales me había consustanciado el tiempo. El primero, El libro, ese instrumento sin el cual no puedo imaginar mi vida, y que no es menos íntimo para mí que las manos o que los ojos. El segundo, La inmortalidad, esa amenaza o esperanza que han soñado tantas generaciones y que postula buena parte de la poesía. El tercero, Swedenborg, el visionario que escribió que los muertos eligen el infierno o el cielo, por libre decisión de su voluntad. El cuarto, El cuento policial, ese juguete riguroso que nos ha legado Edgar Allan Poe. El quinto, El tiempo, que sigue siendo para mí el problema esencial de la metafísica..." ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Borges Oral (Spanish Text)
Incluye las siguientes (excelentes) conferencias:

El libro
La inmortalidad
Emanuel Swedenborg
El cuento policial
El tiempo

A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation
This slim volume contains the five lectures that Borges delivered during May-June of 1978 at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires.The topics include (in chonological order), the book, immortality, Swedenborg, the detective story, and time.First published by Emece Editores in Buenos Aires in 1979 and reprinted in Borges, Obras completas, vol. 4 (Buenos Aires: Emece Editores, 1996), 161-205.Since its publication, it has become a standard reference for Borges scholars and for readers in the Hispanic world.

Two of the lectures, "Immortality" and "The Detective Story", appear in Selected Non-Fictions (Penguin Books, 2000). ... Read more

Product Description
Jorge Luis Borges is one of the key writers of the twentieth century in the context of both Hispanic and world literature. This Companion has been designed for keen readers of Borges whether they approach him in English or Spanish, within or outside a university context. It takes his stories and essays of the forties and fifties, especially Ficciones and El Aleph, to be his most significant works, and organizes its material in consequence. About two thirds of the book analyzes the stories of this period text by text. The early sections map Borges's intellectual trajectory up to the fifties in some detail, and up to his death more briefly. They aim to provide an account of the context which will allow the reader maximum access to the meaning and significance of his work and present a biographical narrative developed against the Argentine literary world in which Borges was a key player, the Argentine intellectual tradition in its historical context, and the Argentine and world politics to which his works respond in more or less obvious ways. STEVEN BOLDY is Reader in Latin American Literature at the University of Cambridge. ... Read more

Product Description
Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. Poems of the Night is a moving collection of the great literary visionary's poetic meditations on night time, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Mostly reprints; buy Selected Poems instead
Penguin's publication of this book is curious. Of the 63 or so poems compiled, 39 are reprinted from Selected Poems, which is a much more comprehensive poetry collection, with over 200 poems, published by Penguin just eleven years ago. Every Borges fan ought to own Selected Poems.So the question becomes whether the extra 24 or so poems, plus earlier versions of two poems, are worth the price of the book -- not a question that one should have to ask where Borges is concerned.And collecting poems based on the themes of dreaming and blindness, as this book does, takes the fun out of the reader's doing that for himself.So one star for the book's concept, but five stars for Borges, for an average of three. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Borges Obras Completas 3
Para una idea más detallada de los libros incluidos es mejor que busquen la información de cada uno por separado.

BORGES, OBRAS COMPLETAS, TOMO 3:

Poesía
La rosa profunda (1975)
La moneda de hierro (1975)
Historia de la noche (1977)
La cifra (1981)
Los conjurados (1985)

Ensayo
Atlas(1985) (Ensayo, prosa y verso)
Siete noches (1980) (Conferencias)
Nueve ensayos dantescos (1982)

Cuentos
El libro de arena(1975)
La memoria de Shakespeare (1983) ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Imprescindible
Junto con "Otras Inquisiciones" este es el libro de ensayos "clave" de Jorge Luis Borges. Hubo tres libros de ensayo antes (El tamaño de mi esperanza, Inquisiciones y El idioma de los argentinos), pero es con este libro que Borges rompe con el costumbrismo local y sitúa a la literatura latinoamericana a la altura de loa clásicos universales y de la tradición europea (desde un punto de vista teórico; en la práctica, y definitivamente, lo hará con "Ficciones"). El ensayo clave es "El escritor argentino y la tradición".
Pero además de esto, cada ensayo que Borges escribe sobre algún tema que le interesa echa luz sobre su propia escritura, su propia técnica, su propia poética.

Lean incluso los artículos que hablan de cosas que no les interesa a primera vista; con Borges siempre hay sorpresas. Para alguien que quiera escribir, los ensayos de Borges son mejores que cualquier manual de ayuda.

Este libro incluye los siguientes ensayos:

La poesía gauchesca - La penúltima versión de la realidad - La supersticiosa ética del lector - El otro Whitman - Una vindicación de la cábala - Una vindicación del falso Basílides - La postulación de la realidad - Films - El arte narrativo y la magia - Paul Groussac - La duración del infierno - Las versiones homéricas - La perpetua carrera de Aquiles y la tortuga - Nota sobre Walt Whitman - Avatares de la tortuga - Vindicación de Bouvart y Pécuchet - Flaubert y su destino ejemplar - El escritor argentino y la tradición - Notas ... Read more

Product Description
Borges' stories have a deceptively simple, almost laconic style. In maddeningly ingenious stories that play with the very form of the short story, Borges returns again and again to his themes: dreams, labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, the manipulations of chance, gaucho knife-fighters, transparent tigers and the elusive nature of identity itself. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Masterful short-stories
Borges' short stories are masterful, unique, enchanting, seducing. I cannot compare them to anything else I have read, except perhaps - very remotely - to Edgar Allan Poe. However, the most striking feature of Borges' stories is a complete and singular quest for the metaphysical in even the simplest occurence, the smallest word. Befitting then that this selection of stories is named after the story "The Aleph", about the Hebrew letter that contains the whole universe. Borges makes it possible and plausible!
Hint to first-time reader: read the first 1-2 pages of each story quickly without trying to understand and then go back and read it again from the start. Try it, it works.

PS This edition also includes "The Maker", a series of very short "vignettes" written by Borges later in his life, and not as convincing as "The Aleph".

To see the entire world
Trying to full describe the writings of Jorge Luis Borges is like trying to explain exactly why Leonardo da Vinci's art still captivates. The man wrote works of art.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" includes several of Borges' stories, with all sorts of surreal twists in a seemingly ordinary world. But this collection is a shining example of why people enjoy Borges -- magical, rich in language, and lets us glimpse the minds of anything and anyone he can conjure up.

The title story involves a sort of fictional version of Borges, who makes regular pilgrimages to the house of a woman he loved, and encounters her slightly nuts first cousin Daneri, who is composing a horrible epic poem describing the whole world. When Daneri's house is threatened, he reveals how he's composed the poem -- the Aleph, which he discovered as a child, and he allows Borges to catch a glimpse of... everything.

The other stories have tales of heretics and holy men, of a man's last days awaiting an assassin's bullet, of a girl who coldly seeks revenge for her father, and the Zahir (the opposite of the Aleph), which can cause an all-encompassing obsession in the one who sees it, until they shut out reality.

It's hard to even find a flaw with "The Aleph" -- Borges' writing is exquisitely detailed and atmospheric, and densely packed with philosophical pockets. The main flaw with this collection is that it's basically split into two very dissimilar styles -- some of them are short and relatively plain, while the others are dense pockets of philosophy. In fact, all the stories are based on the idea of shared experiences and infinite time, where there are no "new" experiences but only repetition.

And Borges wraps these stories in lush, digified prose that takes a little while to wade through, but the richness of the words he uses is worth it ("every generation of mankind includes four honest men who secretly hold up the universe and justify it"). And his writing takes on many different people's selves -- he even makes readers squirm by taking us into the mind of a loyal Nazi.

It's almost like another world, Borgeworld, which is almost like ours, but where magical items are hidden in the cellars, soldiers are forgotten, the Minotaur plays in his maze, and God dreams of mortal lives. The most entrancing foray into Borgeworld is "The Immortal," about a Roman soldier who goes searching for a city of immortals, and finds an ancient poet who seems very familiar.

"The Aleph and Other Stories" is a brilliant collection of Borges' exquisite stories. Magical and gritty, beautiful and haunting -- this collection should be cherished.

Maravillosa historia
Refiriéndome únicamente al único cuento que leí (el que le da nombre al libro) no creo estar cometiendo un error ni valorizando el libro por solo una parte del mismo, porque mi opinión sobre el cuento concuerda con las opiniones vertidas sobre el volumen. Verdaderamente interesante. Y sobre todo quisiera enviar un pequeño mensaje a los lectores habituales de cómics: en "La Cosa del Pantano", durante la etapa de Alan Moore, se puede encontrar un homenaje a Borges, en el capítulo en el que La Cosa encuentra a Metron y a Darskeid en el espacio. ¡Revísenlo!

Un erudito
No me quiero referir especificamente a El Aleph, me encantaria poder transmitirles lo fascinante que ha sido la obra y la vida de Borges.No sera de gran relevancia el primer libro de el que lean, les puedo asegurar quese van a quedar maravillados con la erudiccion Jorge Luis Borges.Lesrecomiendo el poema de los dones.

Uno de los más importantes libros de Borges
Borges es casi un mito en el ambiente cultural y literario. Se conoce su ceguera, su vida libresca, sus amores flemáticos, algún poema fácil, pero como siempre sucede, se sabe menos de su importantísima obra. Difícil aveces, pero siempre entretenido, Borges debería ser más leído. Y "ElAleph" es un libro fundamental. Algunos cuentos, como "losteólogos", "deutches requiem" o "la escritura deldios" juegan con la filosofía con la maestría de Borges, quien haceparecer toda la filosofía occidental como simple acrobacia mental ypretexto literario. Otros mezclan la erudición borgiana con temiblescompadritos argentinos y desoladas pampas (¿quién se atrevió a decir queBorges es europeizante?). Otros recrean episodios mitológicos con girosinesperados. Si uno no queda medio desarmado y desnudo después de estelibro, es que ha visto demasiada televisión ... Read more

Product Description
POR SU MENTE DESPIERTA, que no cede a las convenciones, ni a las costumbres, ni a la haraganería, ni al snobismo, por el caudal de su memoria, por la aptitud para descubrir correspondencias recónditas, pero significativas y auténticas, por su imaginación feliz, por la inagotable energía de invención, Borges descuella en la serie completa de tareas literarias. Borges encara con prodigiosa intensidad de atención el asunto que le interesa. Yo lo he visto apasionado por Chesterton, por Stevenson, por Dante, por una cadena de mujeres (todas irreemplazables y únicas), por las etimologías, por el anglosajón y siempre por la literatura. Esta última pasión molesta a mucha gente, que rápidamente esgrime la habitual antinomia entre los libros y la vida (?). Yo creo que Borges retoma la tradición de los grandes novelistas y cuentistas; o dicho más claramente: la tradición de los contadores de cuentos. La imagen de Borges, aislado del mundo, que algunos proponen, me parece inaceptable. No alegaré aquí su irreductible actitud contra la tiranía, ni su preocupación por la ética; recurriré a un simple recuerdo literario. Cuando nos encontramos para trabajar, en los cuentos, Borges suele anunciarme que trae noticias de tal o cual personaje. Las personas y la comedia que tejen lo atraen. Es un agudo observador de idiosincrasias, un caricaturista veraz pero no implacable (?), he comprobado que la palabra de Borges confiere a la gente más realidad que la vida misma.Adolfo Bioy Casares ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

la voz del autor
Wonderful CD.Listening to exquisite poetry read out loud is always illuminating.Listening to poetry read by the poet who wrote it is sublime. ... Read more

Product Description
In his writing, Borges always combined high seriousness with a wicked sense of fun. Here he reveals his delight in re-creating (or making up) colorful stories from the Orient, the Islamic world, and the Wild West, as well as his horrified fascination with knife fights, political and personal betrayal, and bloodthirsty revenge. Spark-ling with the sheer exuberant pleasure of story-telling, this collection marked the emergence of an utterly distinctive literary voice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Delicious Iniquity
In his first collection of tales, A UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INIQUITY, Borges serves up a delicious mingling of fictionalized fact and semifactual fiction. Though the stories contained in this volume pale in comparison to much of his later work, they nonetheless sparkle with the genius of a master in the making. For discerning readers who are yet to discover the literary wonders of Jorge Luis Borges, the bite-size yarns in this slim compilation are certain to provide a delightful introduction.

Tales of the wicked
Jorge Luis Borges is so well known for his magical, often strange fiction that it seems a bit weird that his first book was sort-of-nonfiction.

In fact, "A Universal History of Iniquity" is a fairly interesting book, in which Borges spins some fanciful details for the lives of great criminals. It's a fascinating read, though his writing is still dogged by first-time-writer awkwardness in some of the stories.

Using words as a paintbrush, Borges explores the slavery-era South, the Wild West, the medieval Middle-East and Japan, Chinese seas, and the dreary streets of twentieth-century American cities. And the people he checks out are almost as colourful, starting out with a silver-tongued, slave-murdering outlaw and a "simple" man who was convinced to impersonate an aristocrat.

But his iniquitous people get even more interesting after that -- a Chinese widow who became a magnificent pirate, a brutal street urchin who became a legendary Western outlaw, a prominent gangster, a Japanese courtier who destroyed a lord (and incurred the wrath of his samurai), and a veiled prophet who created a citadel of devoted followers, and his own dark religion... but whose veil hid a terrifying secret.

And Borges finishes it off with a few more tales more suited to his style -- first there's the gritty, quirky "Man on Pink Corner." And then he addresses some legendary iniquitous people -- from Swedenborg, Richard Francis Burton, "1001 Nights," and the readapted tale of a callous deacon's broken promises.

"A Universal History of Iniquity" was Borges' first collection of stories, and with the exception of a few short stories, his first published works. So he was a little wobbly here as he balanced between telling the life story of his iniquitous people, and embroidering their stories with his lush prose and fictionalized accounts. Most of the time, he's quite good.

In fact, his gorgeous prose embellishes already larger-than-life tales -- he paints lush, murmuring plantations, desert citadels, and houses built by angels. His prose isn't quite as steady as it later was, but has the vibrant intensity that readers would expect ("A landscape dazzlingly underlain with gold and silver, a windblown, dizzying landscape of monumental mesas and delicate colouration...").

Problem is, he doesn't seem very interested in grubby urban streets and dusty Western towns, so these stories feature Borges' writing at its starkest -- it's just not as fascinating when he's putting out the facts without his gorgeous descriptions.

But when there's a larger-than-life element, Borges' famed writing unfolds like a rose. The story of Hakim the Weaver seems like something Borges might have dreamed up, had it not been based on reality -- the blinding hubris, the dark new heresy of endless hells and murky heavens, the bejeweled veils and masks, and the terrible secret that this moving prophet is hiding. And he really blooms with the last few stories, all of which come from older stories.

"A Universal History of Iniquity" is interesting for the people it lays before us, but even more so for the beautiful writing that Jorge Luis Borges wraps around them. A few don't work out, but the whole is exquisite.

Cover choice creates new reality
I don't really need a separate copy ofA Universal History, since I already own the Collected Fictions. But I am fascinated by Penguin's use of M.C. Escher's prints as cover art for English editions of Borges' various short collections, and especially the pairing of this particular Escher with this particular Borges. Escher's "Snakes" has the serpents twined through chain mail. Perhaps Quixote has at last been devoured by his demons? (Borges' fictions are footnotes to Cervantes but take place in realities that might have been carved by Escher.)

The snakes also outline a hollow crucifix and suggest three 6's. Behind this cover, deep within those thin vignettes, Borges' villains are hollow inside the crust of legend and reputation that gives them shape. Probably neither Borges nor Escher would have admitted liking this iniquitous juxtaposition, but they might have tolerated it for those of us who appreciate an occasional obvious image. Certainly Borges would have appreciated a revisionist rumor that Escher secretly carved this image, his last, to illustrate the cover of Borges' work.

So let us begin our reimagining of all of human history, which is to say the history of iniquity, with this newly created fact!

some mistake or misunderstanding?
Well:I not so happy because I ordered this book in Spanish,following an ad I saw in your site.The book arrived in English.I put a complain,asking for the Spanish version,and I received the book ,English version again!!!I have to ask for a label to send it back.Actually,were two different Jorge Luis Borges's books.Thanks

"Corrupt are they, and have done abominable iniquity
there is none that doeth good."

Jorge Luis Borges is thought by many to be the 20th century's greatest Spanish-language writer.Borges was a poet, essayist and short story writer. Although born in Argentina in 1899, Borges spent most of his early years in Europe until his family returned to Buenos Aires in 1921. "A Universal History of Iniquity", originally published as "A Universal History of Infamy" was published in 1935. The stories represent a collection of stories originally published in the Argentine newspaper Critica between 1933 and 1934.The stories were a huge success for the newspaper and established Borges as a writer of the first rank in Argentina.

Each of the stories in Universal History of Iniquity was designed by Borges to give his newspaper readers a small glimpse of the evil that men (and sometimes women) do.They vary from slave owning states in the pre-U.S. Civil War south in "The Cruel Redeemer Lazarus Morell", to the China Seas in "The Widow Ching - Pirate", to feudal Japan in "The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke", Turkistan in "Hakim, the Masked Dyer of Merv" and the mean streets of Buenos Aires in "Man on Pink Corner".Borges acknowledges that these stories were all loosely based on little known historical treatises, the Arabian Nights, and other pieces of fiction.Lazarus Morell was clearly an homage to Mark Twain's Mississippi River stories.

Although this is Borges earliest work one can already see the creative, almost whimsical approach he takes to the art of telling a story.He constantly throws the reader off balance and engages in little acts of mis-direction, perhaps starting a story by telling the reader he will not set out the facts behind a story and then proceed to do just that. In the Preface to the First Edition, Borges writes that certain techniques are "overly used: mismatched lists, abrupt transitions, the reduction of a person's life to two or three scenes."While these are certainly valid self-criticisms the reader should remember, as Borges was no doubt aware, that these stories were written for publication in newspapers with severe word limitations.I thought the condensed nature of the stories heightened their impact and think that perhaps Borges was engaging in yet another act of misdirection.

I came to this book after reading Danilo Kis' "A Tomb for Boris Davidovich". The structure and theme of Tomb for Boris Davidovich was intended by Kis to be part of a literary polemic between Kis and Borges, specifically concerning the title of Borge's Universal History of Iniquity. Kis seven stories all involved iniquities performed by those involved in the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, a horror that Kis felt made Borges' iniquities look quaint by comparison. Kis asserted that the universal infamies related by Borges were those of gangsters, pirates and highwaymen. Kis argues that as far as infamy was concerned, "infamy is when in the name of the idea of a better world for which whole generations have perished, in the name of a humanistic idea, you build camps and destroy both people and their most intimate drams of a better world." Now that I have read both books I think this may be something of an apple and oranges comparison.Nevertheless, reading one book enhanced the experience I got from reading the other.If the reader likes Borges' stories they might also enjoy Kis.

I think "A Universal History of Iniquity" is a wonderful entry point for anyone wishing to discover the work of a wonderful, compelling writer.
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