Customer Reviews

Universal History of Infamy (Twentieth Century Classics)

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Borges first book of short stories is as good and entertaining as anything he wrote. It is probably not the first thing to read by him, though, simply because here he is still "testing" out his style. Do not misunderstand me. These stories have a style of its own, perfectly matching its kind and atmsphere. Only, it is not The Lybrary of Babel or The South...

The book is composed of seven caricaturesque and tragic stories of real but not very well known historical characters (all of them linked to some crime or other); six brief pieces written by Borges as if he were someone else, or taken from imaginary books; and one story (Man on a pink corner) that is considered his first "all by himself" short-story, a crime situated in the 1900's slums of Buenos Aires with a twisted end and unique in Borges' ouvre for his use of slang and street language. Fun to read.

This is a perfect Borges style book, imagination, southern persons, violence and the personal magician it involved the characters about the tradition as "gauchos".

If you want to increase magic at your literature life, read it.

David Pokorski - Brazil