'Summer was drawing to a close, and I realized that the book was monstrous.' Fantastical tales of mazes, puzzles, lost labyrinths and bookish mysteries, from the unique imagination of a literary magician. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was a literary spellbinder whose gripping tales of magic, mystery and murder are shot through with deep philosophical paradoxes. This collection brings together many of his stories, including the celebrated 'Library of Babel', 'Garden of Forking Paths', 'Funes the Memorious' and 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'. In later life, dogged by increasing blindness, Borges used essays and brief tantalizing parables to explore the enigmas of time, identity and imagination. Playful and disturbing, scholarly and seductive, his is a haunting and utterly distinctive voice.

Universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself to be first and foremost a poet. This collection of his poetry, the largest ever to be assembled in English (alongside the original Spanish), includes scores of pieces that have never previously been translated.

Selected from a lifetime's work, the poems explore themes that preoccupied Borges: the enigma of Time and history;
the metaphysics of Schopenhauer and Berkeley;
the cult of his ancestors and his 'mysterious habit called Buenos Aires';
and the imagery of mirrors,
mazes and swords.
The brilliance of the original Spanish is in each case matched by luminous English versions by an impressive array of translators:

Willis Barnstone •
Alexander Coleman •
Robert S. Fitzgerald •
Stephen Kessler •
Kenneth Krabbenhoft •
Eric McHenry •
W. S. Merwin •
Alastair Reid •
Hoyt Rogers •
Mark Strand •
Charles Tomlinson •
Alan S. Trueblood •
John Updike

Little Clothbound Classics: irresistible, mini editions of short stories, novellas and essays from the world's greatest writers, designed by the award-winning Coralie Bickford-Smith Magical books, infinite libraries, parallel worlds, mazes, labyrinths and philosophical paradoxes haunt these spellbinding tales by one of the most uniquely inventive short story writers of the twentieth century. This collection brings together many of Borges's greatest and most beloved stories, including 'The Garden of Forking Paths', 'The Book of Sand' and 'Shakespeare's Memory'.

The acclaimed translation of Borges's valedictory stories, in its first stand-alone edition
Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of the twentieth century. Now Borges's remarkable last major story collection, "The Book of Sand," is paired with a handful of writings from the very end of his life. Brilliantly translated, these stories combine a direct and at times almost colloquial style coupled with Borges's signature fantastic inventiveness. Containing such marvelous tales as "The Congress," "Undr," "The Mirror and the Mask," and "The Rose of Paracelsus," this edition showcases Borges's depth of vision and superb image-conjuring power.

Jorge Luis Borges has been called the greatest Spanish-language writer of our century. Now for the first time in English, all of Borges' dazzling fictions are gathered into a single volume, brilliantly translated by Andrew Hurley. From his 1935 debut with The Universal History of Iniquity, through his immensely influential collections Ficciones and The Aleph, these enigmatic, elaborate, imaginative inventions display Borges' talent for turning fiction on its head by playing with form and genre and toying with language. Together these incomparable works comprise the perfect one-volume compendium for all those who have long loved Borges, and a superb introduction to the master's work for those who have yet to discover this singular genius.

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.

A master class in the art of writing by one of its most distinguished and innovative practitioners Delve into the labyrinth of Jorge Luis Borges's thoughts on the theory and practice of literature, and learn from one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century not only what a writer does but also what a writer is. For the first time ever, here is a volume that brings together Borges's wide-ranging reflections on writers, on the canon, on the craft of fiction and poetry, and on translation--an ars poetica of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. Featuring many pieces appearing in English for the first time--including his groundbreaking early essay on magical realism, "Stories from Turkestan"--On Writing provides a map of both the changes and continuities in Borges's aesthetic over the course of his life. It is an indispensable handbook for anyone hoping to master their own style or to witness Borges's evolution as a writer.

In a perfect pairing of talent, this volume blends twenty illustrations by Peter SA-s with Jorge Luis Borgesas 1957 compilation of 116 astrange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination, a from dragons and centaurs to Lewis Carrollas Cheshire Cat and the Morlocks of H. G. Wellsas "The Time Machine." A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to life with art commissioned specifically for this volume, "The Book of Imaginary Beings" will delight readers of classic fantasy as well as Borgesas many admirers.

Revered for his magnificent works of fiction, Jorge Luis Borges thought of himself primarily as a poet. "Poems of the Night" is a moving collection of the great literary visionary's poetic meditations on nighttime, darkness, and the crepuscular world of visions and dreams, themes that speak implicitly to the blindness that overtook Borges late in life-and yet the poems here are drawn from the full span of Borges's career. Featuring such poems as "History of the Night" and "In Praise of Darkness" and more than fifty others in luminous translations by an array of distinguished translators-among them W.S. Merwin, Christopher Maurer, Alan Trueblood, and Alastair Reid-this volume brings to light many poems that have never appeared in English, presenting them "en face" with their Spanish originals.

The incomparable Borges delivered these seven lectures in Buenos Aires in 1977; attendees were treated to Borges' erudition on the following topics: Dante's The Divine Comedy, Nightmares, Thousand and One Dreams, Buddhism, Poetry, The Kabbalah, and Blindness.

Jorge Luis Borge's Fictions introduced an entirely new voice into world literature. It is here we find the astonishing accounts of Funes, the man who can forget nothing; the French poet who recreated Don Quixote word for word; the fatal lottery in Babylon; the mysterious planet of Tlön; and the library containing every possible book in the whole universe. Here too are the philosophical detective stories and the haunting tales of Irish revolutionaries, gaucho knife fights and dreams within dreams which proved so influential (and yet impossible to imitate). This collection was eventually to bring Borges international fame; over fifty years later, it remains endlessly intriguing.

The groundbreaking trans-genre work of Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) has been insinuating itself into the structure, stance, and very breath of world literature for well over half a century. Multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive writing is now frequently labeled Borgesian. Umberto Eco's international bestseller, The Name of the Rose, is, on one level, an elaborate improvisation on Borges' fiction "The Library," which American readers first encountered in the original 1962 New Directions publication of Labyrinths. This new edition of Labyrinths, the classic representative selection of Borges' writing edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby (in translations by themselves and others), includes the text of the original edition (as augmented in 1964) as well as Irby's biographical and critical essay, a poignant tribute by Andre Maurois, and a chronology of the author's life. Borges enthusiast William Gibson has contributed a new introduction bringing Borges' influence and importance into the twenty-first century."

FICTIONS is perhaps the single most mysterious and extraordinary collection of short stories written this century. Influenced by writers as disparate as Lewis Carroll, Stevenson and Cervantes, Borges is nethertheless a complete original who can turn dry logical puzzles in to enchanting fables. The Pieces in this volume represent his most accomplished work.

Full of philosophical puzzles and supernatural surprises, these stories 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 wrote as failing eyesight and public fame began to undermine his sense of self.

It will come as a surprise to some readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges's extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in the various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and culture--though revered in Latin America and Europe as among his finest work--have scarcely been translated into English.

Selected Non-Fictions presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers. Here is the dazzling metaphysician speculating on the nature of time and reality and the inventions of heaven and hell, and the almost superhumanly erudite reader of the world's literatures, from Homer to Ray Bradbury, James Joyce to Lady Murasaki. Here, too, the political Borges, taking courageous stands against fascism, anti-Semitism, and the Peron dictatorship; Borges the moive critic, on King Kong and Citizen Kane and the Borgesian art of dubbing; and Borges the regular columnist for the Argentine equivalent of the Ladies' Home Journal, writing hilarious book reviews and capsule biographies of modern writers.

The first comprehensive selection of this work in any language, Selected Non-Fiction presents over 160 of these astonishing writings, from his youthful manifestos to his last meditations on his favorite books. More than a hundred of these pieces have never before appeared in English, and all have been rendered in brilliant new translations by Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger. This unique selection, the third and final volume in Penguin's centenary edition of the Collected Work in English, presents Borges as at once a deceptively self-effacing guide to the universe and the inventor of a universe that is an idispensable guide to Borges.

Though universally acclaimed for his dazzling fictions, Jorge Luis Borges always considered himself first and foremost a poet. This new bilingual selection brings together some two hundred poems--the largest collection of Borges' poetry ever assembled in English, including scores of poems never previously translated. Edited by Alexander Coleman, the selection draws from a lifetime's work--from Borges' first published volume of verse, Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), to his final work, Los Conjurados, published just a year before his death in 1986. Throughout this unique collection the brilliance of the Spanish originals is matched by luminous English versions by a remarkable cast of translators, including Robert Fitzgerald, Stephen Kessler, W. S. Merwin, Alastair Reid, Mark Strand, Charles Tomlinson, and John Updike.

In this collection of wise, witty and fascinating essays, Borges discusses the existence (or non-existence) of Hell, the flaws in English literary detectives, the philosophy of contradictions, and the many translators of 1001 Nights. Varied and enthralling, these pieces examine the very nature of our lives, from cinema and books to history and religion. GREAT IDEAS. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Recorded during Jorge Luis Borges’s final years, this second volume of his conversations with Osvaldo Ferrari provides a wide-ranging reflection on the life and work of Argentina’s master writer and favorite conversationalist. In Conversations: Volume 2, Borges and Ferrari engage in a dialogue that is both improvisational and frequently humorous as they touch on subjects as diverse as epic poetry, detective fiction, Buddhism, and the moon landing. With his signature wit, Borges offers insight into the philosophical basis of his stories and poems, his fascination with religious mysticism, and the idea of life as a dream. He also dwells on more personal themes, including the influence of his mother and father on his intellectual development, his friendships, and living with blindness. These recollections are alive to the passage of history, whether in the changing landscape of Buenos Aires or a succession of political conflicts, leading Borges to contemplate what he describes as his “South American destiny.� The recurrent theme of these conversations, however, is a life lived through books. Borges draws on the resources of a mental library that embraces world literature—ancient and modern. He recalls the works that were a constant presence in his memory and maps his changing attitudes to a highly personal canon. In the prologue to the volume, Borges celebrates dialogue and the transmission of culture across time and place. These conversations are a testimony to the supple ways that Borges explored his own relation to numerous traditions.

At the age of seventy, after a gap of twenty years, Jorge Luis Borges returned to writing short stories. In Brodie's Report, he returned also to the style of his earlier years with its brutal realism, nightmares, and bloodshed. Many of these stories, including "Unworthy" and "The Other Duel," are set in the macho Argentinean underworld, and even the rivalries between artists are suffused with suppressed violence. Throughout, opposing themes of fate and free will, loyalty and betrayal, time and memory flicker in the recesses of these compelling stories, among the best Borges ever wrote.First time in Penguin Classics

The Book Of Sand was the last of Borges' major collections to be published. The stories are, in his words, 'variations on favourite themes... combining a plain and at times almost colloquial style with a fantastic plot'. It includes such marvellous tales as 'The Congress', 'Undr' and 'The Mirror and the Mask'. Also included are the handful of stories written right at the end of Borges' life - 'August 25, 1983', 'Blue Tigers', 'The Rose of Paracelsus' and 'Shakespeare's Memory.'