Ficciones (Spanish Edition) [Paperback]

Jorge Luis Borges (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: 1997

En Español: Una de las colecciones literarias más importantes del siglo veinte, los dieciocho cuentos contenidos en la obra Ficciones de Jorge Luis Borges invitan al lector a reexaminar sus previas suposiciones y preocupaciones relativas a la naturaleza del universo. Desde “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, el relato que, según muchos críticos, predijo la creación de Internet, y “Examen de la obra de Herbert Quain”, que combina la prueba matemática con la reseña literaria, hasta “El Sur”, una amalgama de fantasía, autobiografía, y folklórica argentina (y que Borges una vez dijo que era su cuento preferido), estas Ficciones abarcan lo esencial del inimitable estilo borgesiano.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Se reunen en Ficciones dos libros de Jorge Luis Borges fechados en 1941 y 1944. ""El jardin de senderos que se bifurcan"" incluye ocho relatos, entre los que cabe destacar dos breves narraciones de excepcional calidad: ""Pierre Menard, autor del Quijote"" y ""La Biblioteca de Babel"". ""Artificios"" lo forman nueve cuentos, entre ellos ""La muerte y la brujula --Los editores

Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: Alianza Editorial (1997)
• Language: Spanish
• ISBN-10: 8420633127
• ISBN-13: 978-8420633121
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #71,455 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #16 in Books > Libros en español > Literatura y ficción > Historia y Crítica > Crítica y Teoría
  • #16 in Books > Libros en español > Literatura y ficción > Cuentos Cortos
  • #21 in Books > Libros en español > Literatura y ficción > Latino Americana

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ficciones - Unique, Remarkable and Exciting., December 21, 2001

By 

Michael Wischmeyer (Houston, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Ficciones (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

Imagine removing a blindfold. You are in some American city, but which one? For many cities the street layouts, the buildings, the commercial enterprises are so similar that few clues would be available. But New York, Boston, and San Francisco would be immediately recognizable.

In much the same way the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Umberto Eco, Franz Kafka, and Edgar Allen Poe stand apart from other great writers. They each offer a uniquely fascinating perspective, an unusual style combined with a remarkable command of language.

I first encountered Ficciones quite a few years ago. I was not familiar with Jorge Luis Borges and was not prepared for this remarkable discovery. I still have that book, a little paperback priced at $2.45. I return to it again and again, always to find myself surprised by Borges. (I now have all of Borges works that have been translated to English.)

Borges assumes that his reader is literate. He makes allusions to a wide range of works, occasionally mentioning entirely mythical books that somehow should exist. His volcabulary is immense, but his writing is clear, entertaining, and unpredictable. It is said that Borges has seemingly read everything - and not in translation, but in the original Latin, German, French, English, and Spanish. To better appreciate Dante, he taught himself 13th century Italian.

The poetry, essays, and short stories of Borges are already recognized as classic works of the 20th century. Ficciones, a collection of short stories from 1941-1944, is a particularly good introduction. Take a look at some other reader reviews, but not too many. Borges is best as a surprise, like a fine wine that is unexpectedly encountered.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Un clasico de Borges, September 4, 2001

By 

"chileanreader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ficciones (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

Junto con el Aleph, Ficciones es el libro que me convirtió en un fanático de Borges. En realidad, en este pequeño volumen quedan resumidas todas las genialidades, búsquedas, acertijos, historias, bromas, erudiciones de Borges.

Para alguien que nunca ha leído a Borges es sin dudas un buen comienzo para empezar a enamorarse de uno de los mas grandes escritores de nuestra lengua. Para aquellos que ya somos sus lectores, leer y releer Ficciones es un placer inagotable.

ESte libro es sencillamente una maravilla

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Vision and Foundation, December 12, 2001

By 

Matthew Vanhouten (Rochester, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Ficciones (Spanish Edition) (Paperback)

I should begin this review by saying that this is the only work by Borges I have read. I am very familiar with modern and contemporary literature, and through my exposure to others have repeatedly heard reference to Borges. I now know why he is so frequently cited and why the blurb on the paperback version's back cover says "without Borges, the modern Latin American novel simply wouldn't exist." I think Borges would likely challenge that assertion, but at the least Borges has an extraordinarily precociousness about him. He is postmodern in every sense of the term without the pretension that often accompanies a postmodern sensibility.

In Ficciones we are exposed to the possibility that nihilism is the ultimate reality. In other postmodern works, this idea is presently mordantly, the author reverently succumbing to their own notion of nothingness. In Ficciones the possibility that nothing really exists also has a corollary: the possibility that anything exists. It is this sense of limitless possibility that predominates the first half of this collection of short fictions. In my opinion the first half of this book, entitled The Garden of Forking Paths is far more engaging than the second, Artifices. In Part I, we are told some of Borges's most noted tales, including The Library of Babel in which everything that can exist is recorded and stored in an eternal grid of rooms. I have heard Borges's work described as labyrinthine, but I think that term both simplifies and obscures his fictions. To say it simplifies his work is to say that it reduces his stories to puzzles, or mazes for which there may or may not be any solution. In my reading of Borges the idea of a solution to a riddle presupposes that a singular answer is available. To Borges, there is an infinite array of solutions to an infinite array of problems. What he does, because he must in order to address such rampant chaos, is create boxes which neatly contain a microscopic summary of the spread of problems at hand. This is what I believe people refer to when they say he is labyrinthine (not to mention he often writes about labyrinths and puzzles).

The themes of recursion and simultaneity dominate Part I. Everything exists at once. Time is an illusion. Yet he uses the conceit of a library to attempt to order it. This is futile and he knows it, so he situates the narrator of that tale in a task of recursively searching for and ultimately never finding a definitive explanation to anything.

Part II is more narrative-driven and does include some very good stories, particularly "Funes, the Memorius", "The Secret Miracle" and "Three Versions of Judas". These tales put into motion the intellectual conceits introduced in Part I.

Borges is not nearly as impenetrable as I was led to believe. I am not saying that it's easy either. Although this book is short, it took me about 3 days to finish because the stories are so compact. It takes time for the ideas to unravel. In Ficciones, Borges makes Einstein's physics into readable literature. He was postmodern before modernism was finished. This thin volume is a must for anyone with a passion for 20th century literature.