The Aleph and Other Stories (Penguin Classics)

I've never come across a writer like this before. This book and Fictions are historic creations. I think Chekhov has competition for greatest short story writer of all time.

Brilliant book and brilliant writer.

i was asked by a friend to order on their behalf as they had read it before and highly rec it

At times pretentious, at times maddeningly ingenious. There's something for everyone. Four stars.

Great book!

Very good

Trying to full describe the writings of Jorge Luis Borges is like trying to explain exactly why Leonardo da Vinci's art still captivates. The man wrote works of art. "The Aleph and Other Stories" includes two different books of Borges', very different in their styles -- one is rich and epic, while the other is sort of short and quirky. But this collection is a shining example of why people enjoy Borges -- magical, rich in language, and lets us glimpse the minds of anything and anyone he can conjure up. The title story involves a sort of fictional version of Borges, who makes regular pilgrimages to the house of a woman he loved, and encounters her slightly nuts first cousin Daneri, who is composing a horrible epic poem describing the whole world. When Daneri's house is threatened, he reveals how he's composed the poem -- the Aleph, which he discovered as a child, and he allows Borges to catch a glimpse of... everything. The other stories have tales of heretics and holy men, of a man's last days awaiting an assassin's bullet, of a girl who coldly seeks revenge for her father, and the Zahir (the opposite of the Aleph), which can cause an all-encompassing obsession in the one who sees it, until they shut out reality. And in the second book, he spins up a long string of very, VERY short stories (some only a paragraph). Some are musings on his toes, and nothing much more. But there are also brief stories of startling depth, such as God speaking to Dante and the "Divine Comedy's" leopard, and assuring them of their literary immortality. The main flaw with this collection is that it's basically split into two very dissimilar styles -- some of them are short and relatively plain, while the others are dense pockets of philosophy. In fact, all the stories in the first portion of the book are based on the idea of shared experiences and infinite time, where there are no "new" experiences but only repetition. And Borges wraps these stories in lush, digified prose that takes a little while to wade through, but the richness of the words he uses is worth it ("every generation of mankind includes four honest men who secretly hold up the universe and justify it"). And his writing takes on many different people's selves -- he even makes readers squirm by taking us into the mind of a loyal Nazi. It's almost like another world, Borgeworld, which is almost like ours, but where magical items are hidden in the cellars, soldiers are forgotten, the Minotaur plays in his maze, and God dreams of mortal lives. The most entrancing foray into Borgeworld is "The Immortal," about a Roman soldier who goes searching for a city of immortals, and finds an ancient poet who seems very familiar. "The Aleph and Other Stories" is a brilliant collection of Borges' exquisite stories. Magical and gritty, beautiful and haunting -- this collection should be cherished.

Great condition, great work

Buen libro, pero comprad en librerías locales no en Amazon.

The author is a famous writer and has got many awards to his credit. So, I dare not write a ‘literary’ review. Yet, after reading the book, I cannot keep quiet. I will jot down my impressions and call it quits. There were no blogs or Internet in the days that this book was written. The short stories (many are less than half a page) of this book fit the description of blogs better. Some, in fact, are not stories at all, but musings. One thing remarkable about the author is that the author is highly imaginative; irrationally so at tmes. Past, present, future, reality, the unreal, philosophy, mysticism, existing, non-existing, everything is jumbled up. Again and again, you can see that certain themes are repeated. The author seems to be obsessed by labyrinths. Every alternate story (not literally) has a labyrinth. Frankly, after a while one really gets bored. Thankfully, it is not a thick book.

This book is most book like with printing on paper.

The book is amazing and the edition too, but the delivery was terrible, they sent it to the wrong address and the package was outside all night, it was completely wet.

When I was in Buenos Aires used to go to the famous cafe Borges used to frequent every morning and read a couple of his short stories. Wow wow wow! What a writer. Im ashamed to say I have only recently heard of this great man. After each story I used to go for a walk to get my mind around it. Borges took me to places i have never been before.