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The Garden of Forking Paths (PENGUIN MODERN) Paperback – February 22, 2018
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length64 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPENGUIN UK
- Publication dateFebruary 22, 2018
- Dimensions4.37 x 6.3 inches
- ISBN-109780241339053
- ISBN-13978-0241339053
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Product details
- ASIN : 0241339057
- Publisher : PENGUIN UK (February 22, 2018)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 64 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780241339053
- ISBN-13 : 978-0241339053
- Item Weight : 1.59 ounces
- Dimensions : 4.37 x 6.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #207,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the author

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges KBE (/ˈbɔːrhɛs/; Spanish: [ˈxorxe ˈlwis ˈborxes] 24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986), was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and El Aleph (The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Literary critics have described Borges as Latin America's monumental writer.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Grete Stern (1904-1999) (http://www.me.gov.ar/efeme/jlborges/1951-1960.html) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Pity this volume as Jorge Luis Porges was a great writer. All of his short stories deserve far better treatment from publishers.
Top reviews from other countries
The brevity of Borges' writing is found throughout this edition, but none more so than the fascinating The Garden of Forking Paths. Set during the First World War, a Chinese spy living in England and working for Germany, has had his cover blown and he is on the run with sensitive information. Events take a philosophical turn as he encounters The Garden of Forking Paths, splits in time, rather than space, and all the possible outcomes that occur.
"The Garden of Forking Paths is a huge riddle, or parable, whose subject is time."
"(There is) an infinite series of times, in a dizzily growing, ever spreading network of diverging, converging and parallel times. This web of time--the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries--embraces EVERY possibility."
Borges' work comes down to that point- we are living countless lives, where we all make different decisions, and end up making a variety of decisions different from the time we are inhabiting at this moment in time. I can see this short story being studied, debated and talked about by students, scholars, literature lovers and philosophers for any years to come.
My second favourite short story that I would like to discuss is The Book of Sand. A travelling Bible salesman sells a holy book from India, The Book of Sand, so called because “neither sand nor this book has a beginning or an end.” It is written in an unknown script, with occasionally illustrations, and page numbers that are non-sequential and change every time.
In this short story, readers might have a familiar image in their mind- Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, and his obsession with The One Ring. Of course there is a deeper meaning to the story, as is the case for all of the short stories in this collection, but again Borges uses the theme of time and the infinite. This time he utilises these themes in the form of a mysterious book, which mirrors man's search for the world's existence, concluding that it is endless and fruitless search.
This Penguin Modern of Borges' short stories was fascinating to read, and having been in a mindset to read something deemed a classic with a philosophical nature attributed to it- I have recently read and not enjoyed Kafka's The Trial- it was good to read Borges' work, as it was written in absorbing style, and the stories were succinct and thought-provoking.







