Borges' collection of novels

Author: Borges
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-12-01
Features: Reading Borges, one always feels that he is not a person existing as a concrete entity, but a ghost wandering between languages and languages. He is revered as "a writer who writes for writers," and his texts—only this vague and overused word can describe them, because Borges's works are difficult to distinguish between poetry, fiction, or essays—have long surpassed pure writing. He is a reader; his life was spent reading others in libraries, and in the process of writing, he constantly read himself with imagination and religious devotion. Borges entered the ranks of narrative masters only with short stories, and such writers are hard to count in the entire 20th century; besides him, only Lu Xun and Babel. It is generally believed that in an era dominated by commercial publishing, a relatively pure form of writing like the short story is difficult to enter the public eye, but for true masters, what they write is not a problem. Borges's stories are not only short but also not numerous; he wrote only seventy short stories in his life, yet he has the most Spanish readers and has brought the entire world into his story labyrinth.
When it comes to artistic style, Borges differs greatly from Lu Xun and Babel. If the latter two examine the world with anxious eyes, Borges clearly reveals a playful interest in life. Borges himself said that the stories he wrote "aim to entertain and move, not to enlighten or moralize" (Introduction to "The Report of Brodie"), but this is somewhat half-truth. His works, full of wisdom and temperament, are filled with unimaginable fantasies yet always point directly to the heart. For example, in his most proud stories like The South, Mark the Evangelist, and The Third Person, the law of narration often involves the dislocation of spirit and reality, mostly pushed into corners by stubborn forces. Great writers are destined to fulfill the mission of exploring fate, whether through satire or compassion, their hearts carry the weight. Borges is a subversive narrator; "retelling" legends or recorded figures and events is his skillful and habitual technique, as he himself said it is "altering and distorting others' stories" (Introduction to "The Labyrinth of Evil Deeds," 1954 edition). He uses this method to depict the many possibilities of things, showing the world's diversity and trials, gradually unraveling a labyrinthine picture from the multidimensional relationships of time and space and the multiple compositions of reality.
"Maze" and "mirror" are common imagery in Borges's novels. Those branching paths and multiple reflections seem to evoke Kafka's infinite meaning, but here there is no unbearable delay; instead, the ever-changing variables leave you overwhelmed. Subversion is not just "retelling." In Borges's works, there are other techniques, such as The Scars, where the first-person narrative reverses the identities of heroes and traitors, or in Mark the Evangelist, where a free thinker spreads the desire to create gods. These reverse approaches not only add reading interest but also shake up certain unshakable things. Subversion, at its core, is a critical intention. In Death and the Compass, Borges mocks people's obsession with cultural concepts of patterns, as judges blindly deduce causal relationships from the dark fog of Jewish history, only to find that the culprit has used those religious legends to set traps. Everything started with an accidental mistake of entering the wrong room. In fact, history is also a case of making the best of a mistake, and Borges's subtle smile, when faced with these inverted cultural interpretations, always carries philosophical contemplation. In his most important work, The Garden of Forking Paths, the in the infinite becomes a narrative theme, and such metaphysical exploration is presented with the suspense of detective fiction—a truly interesting literary experiment.
Surprisingly, the erudite Borges has no hint of pedantry. He not only fuses art and philosophy but also often blends different genres and narrative techniques, viewing the novel as something without genre boundaries. In his early creative years, the innovative Joyce and Kafka had already bewildered people with their new tricks, but Borges saw through their essence at a glance, allowing him to boldly bypass the walls of modernism and go further. Compared to those noisy, cynical modernist masters, Borges always carries more elegance and composure. Reading his novels, one sometimes feels the narrative tone of 19th-century writers, so elegant and classic, stirring one to seek memories of the past.
This collection includes fifty-nine stories, which appear in Borges's six short-story collections: The Labyrinth of Evil Deeds (1935), Ficciones (1944), Alegria y Dolor (1949), The Report of Brodie (1970), The Book of Sand (1970), and The Memory of Shakespeare (1983). These entries are also included in the Collected Works of Borges·Novels published by our press in 1999. The eleven works not included in this book may not all be unimportant, but the selection criteria were primarily based on the reading preferences of domestic readers, meaning that the most readable pieces were included as much as possible. For readers interested in specialized research, the Complete Works of Borges (five volumes) is undoubtedly the book—it is the only simplified Chinese edition of Borges's works, and our press will continue to publish it. This book was translated by Mr. Wang Yongnian and Mr. Chen Quan. The last four stories in the index (The Memory of Shakespeare) were translated by Mr. Chen Quan, while the rest were translated by Mr. Wang Yongnian.