Not so much short stories as ingenious intellectual sketches, outlines of novels or essays. Borges' infinite Library of Babel is a favourite object of discussion with evolutionary scientists and philosophers. How can we ever fully know, even in theory, a world that is infinite?

How did this one slip into my bag? *innocent face*

I enjoyed these intense short stories, although The Lottery in Babylon wasn't quite as satisfying as the others. The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero was probably the most satisfying and The Library of Babel reminded me of several other fictional libraries - why are libraries repeatedly imgained as infinite? ;o)

The shortest of them all, The Witness, is the one that will leave me with most to think of and I may copy it out before this book goes on its way to RandomPoet.

RELEASE NOTES:

Going in the post to Random-Poet today, with apologies for the delay.

Received in the post today! Look forward to reading this, Borges writing is always so clever. Thanks for sending it to me CaterinaAnna!

I loved reading this book, I read one piece at a time slowly to savour it and then left the book for a while to pick it up again to read the next piece. Each piece is wonderful and mind expanding. I love Blue Tigers and the strange self perpetuating stones in that story, weird. The Library of Babel I'd read before and its even better second time round. So thanks CaterinaAnna for sending this to me!

I've held onto this book for ages, but I'm now going to offer it up in my Christmas giveaway on my blog over the next few days.

It's now off to the USA to the blogger who won it in my Book Giveaway