When people compare Borges to Gabriel Garcia Marquez I have to wonder if they've actually read either of those authors. Other then being notable Spanish language writers of weirdness they couldn't be more different. Marquez is Dionysus, Borges is Apollo. Borges' stories are neat, dry packages to be carefully opened up preferably in the silence of an air conditioned library.
Borges has complex philosophical ideas to convey and the delivery mechanism of a story or a plot are frequently hassles to him. His most convincing works are from the detached perspective of a man looking back through the fog of years or the perspective of an editor pouring through an unreliable translation of an invented ancient epic. In Averroes' Search he simply annihilates the invented world the story takes place in because he couldn't stand any longer the indignity of a plot.
Borges is my favorite kind of genius, the kind with obvious and easily identifiable quirks. ( )

Every few pages Borges manages to change my perception of the world. Some of these stories are eye-opening even if they fail to reveal the meaning of life, they still contain infinity. That said, there were a couple of stories that I didn't get into and "The Maker" section was a bit too specific to Argentina and Classics for me to fully appreciate. But, looking past that, Borges is a god. ( )

The fame Jorge Luis Borges received came nearly twenty years after writing his best short stories, many of which are collected in "The Aleph." These stories are all very short, from just a paragraph to a few pages. They do not fit clearly in genre fiction, but they are mostly fantastical.

There are references to ancient cultures and civilizations, discussions of immortality and fallibility, and a constant warping of time, mostly set in Argentina in the late 1800's or early 1900's. I spent very little time or effort trying to understand some of these ideas and I think I am better off for having simply read through the stories. While literary and high when they come from Borges, these stories might be considered pulp science fiction coming from other writers.

One criticism that I have seen in other reviews is that women are absent from the worlds Borges creates. This is definitely true. There is a one female protagonist - a woman plotting to avenge her father's death - in the entire book. In another story, an unnamed woman acts as a reason for Borges' characters to discuss loyalty and love.

The translation I read, by Andrew Hurley, is smooth and free-flowing. ( )

fragments marcats Santi

El Aleph es uno de los libros de cuentos más representativos del escritor argentino Jorge Luis Borges. Publicado en 1949, fue reeditado por el autor en 1974. Sus textos remiten a una infinidad de fuentes y bibliografías en torno a las cuales se articulan mitos y metáforas de la tradición literaria universal.