The Aleph

Delightfully, Borges steps from the circle of his admiring commentators to introduce himself to new readers and personally greet old ones. In tandem with his translator, Norman di Giovanni, he has reworked these twenty stories to make them read as though they had been written in English, a language he has spoken and admired since childhood; and as an additional inducement there are unprecedented confidences - his own, often very witty, marginal comments on the tales, and a wry and gracious autobiographical essay which supplies the personal matrix (of his friendship with BioyCasares: Bioy was really and secretly the master ; and of his blindness: Blindness ran in my family. . . . Blindness also seems to run among the directors of the National library ). Ten of the stories are new to English, including the earliest, Streetcorner Man, and the latest, Rosendo's Tale, more and less operatic variations on a single theme of challenge and cowardice. Among the others are such keynote works as The Aleph (occult intrusion into the commonplace), The Approach to al-Mu'tasim (a parable buried in para-criticism), The Circular Ruins (positing an infinite regression of dream-creators), and Death and the Compass (spiritual quest and detective tale resolved into a perfect metaphysical mystery tour). Aficionados may regret the omissions arising from legal difficulties; but newcomers will scarcely notice, as here truth picks up where invention leaves off. I myself had a detective on my heels, whom I first took on long aimless walks and at last befriended. . . . (Kirkus Reviews)