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)
Although full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, the stories which make up The Aleph also contain some of Borges's most fully realized human characters. With uncanny insight he takes us inside the minds of an unrepentant Nazi, an imprisoned Mayan priest, fanatical Christian theologians, a woman plotting vengeance on her father's 'killer' and a man awaiting his assassin in a Buenos Aires guest house. This volume also contains the hauntingly brief vignettes about literary imagination and personal identity, collected in The Maker, which Borges created as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.
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