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Ficciones
9Jorge Luis Borges
Borges's short stories invented most of postmodern fiction before it existed — labyrinths, infinite libraries, books that contain all other books.
GBM Assessment (Score: 9/10)
Ficciones is considered a foundational text of postmodern literature, a collection of stories that transformed the possibilities of narrative fiction. Through his explorations of labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, and paradoxes of identity, Borges created a body of work that blurs the boundaries between philosophy and storytelling. His influence on subsequent writers of experimental and postmodern fiction has been immeasurable.
Dating from Buenos Aires during the 1940s, Ficciones emerged from the intellectual ferment of Argentina's literary scene, where Borges fashioned philosophical puzzles into astonishingly original short fictions. The collection's impact radiated outward to influence virtually every major postmodernist writer, from Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco to Thomas Pynchon and Roberto Bolaño.
World War II, 1942-1945
The most destructive conflict in history. The Holocaust. Stalingrad, D-Day, Hiroshima. Camus publishes The Stranger in occupied France. Saint-Exupery writes The Little Prince in New York exile before dying on a reconnaissance mission. Eliot completes Four Quartets. Orwell writes Animal Farm. Borges publishes Ficciones in Buenos Aires. Hayek publishes The Road to Serfdom, warning that central economic planning leads inevitably to totalitarianism. The postwar world is being imagined even as the war rages.
Awards & Adaptations
Influenced every postmodernist.
Recommended Edition
Various (1962)
