Customer Reviews

Brodie's Report (Penguin Classics)

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Borges wrote these stories after seventeen years in which he had written no stories. They are described by him as 'simple' though he immediately qualifies this by saying 'complexity' is the heart of reality as each text relates to the world as a whole. He speaks too of these stories as stories without surprise stories which lead to a gradual realization of expectation planted earlier in the work.

The stories are it is true without the complexity, the metaphysical and philosophical element, the scholarly element which plays such a large part in Borges 'Ficciones'. They are not the Borges of the most incredible Imagination but the Borges of the mystery novel and popular fiction.

And in fact a large number of the stories have to do with a kind of 'murder' or at least violent death at the end. They are stories in which masculine honor plays a major part. And in fact I believe many readers would in today's world find them defective in their over- macho traditional Spanish and Argentinean cultural emphasis.

None of the stories is great but all are highly readable and told with Borges great narrative skill.

If these were the only stories he had ever written he would not be known outside his native Argentina. But they are Borges and for the Preface and Afterward alone well worth reading.