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Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius book cover
Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
1940
First Published
4.33
Average Rating
78
Number of Pages

Here is a handsome edition of one of Borges' "ficciones," in a translation first published in Labyrinths in 1962. It's an important story in the Borges' canon, incorporating most of the author's philosophical and esthetic preoccupations in a typically brief compass. With great solemnity and a convincing array of scholarly detail (including annotated references to imaginary books and articles), Borges concocts a fable of an alternate world and its infiltration of our own. The reality of Tlön is idealist: material objects have no existence; language has no nouns; its principal discipline is psychology, since its inhabitants see the universe as nothing but a series of mental processes. A series of 24 illustrations accompanies the text. Their disturbing resemblances to our reality make them appropriate reflections of Borges' imaginative constructs.' —The Kingston Whig-Standard

Avg Rating
4.33
Number of Ratings
2,150
5 STARS
56%
4 STARS
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3 STARS
12%
2 STARS
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1 STARS
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Author

Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Author · 116 books

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo, usually referred to as Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish pronunciation: [xoɾxe lwis boɾxes]), was an Argentine writer and poet born in Buenos Aires. In 1914, his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school and traveled to Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in Surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. Borges was fluent in several languages. He was a target of political persecution during the Peron regime, and supported the military juntas that overthrew it. Due to a hereditary condition, Borges became blind in his late fifties. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986. J. M. Coetzee said of Borges: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."

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