A review by dotsndloops
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges

4.0

this is pretty magical and bizarre and pretty difficult reading - hard work that payed off tenfold. borges did meta better than anyone else I've read. dreams within dreams, dead-pan fictional reviews of non-existent books, everything seems so well thought out and hyper-intelligent. even still, every story has a sparkle in its eye, a wink and a nudge, a self-deprecation, a giggle, as if to say "don't take me too seriously". hard to pick a favourite story but some favourites are "The Circular Ruins", "Funes, His Memory" (or "Funes The Memorious" in other translations), and "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote". as diabolical as the new penguin modern classics covers look, the afterword and translator notes were the icing on the cake for me. made me feel so much less stupid for finding the writing difficult and also reinforced my suspicions that Borges was a bit of a cheeky monkey. definitely one to come back to, tricky and delicious and itches a part of my brain that I didn't know existed !!