In his eighties at the time of publication, Jorge Luis Borges had come into English in haphazard fashion, so that the growing numbers of his readers had to track him down through a confusion of incomplete collections, to piece him together from a set of displaced parts. Although Borges is celebrated for certain stories, certain poems, certain essays, even for certain words and phrases, these are all facets of an unmistakable whole, the Borges whom many consider to be the writer of our time. This book includes a number of earlier pieces never before translated, some of them not collected even in Spanish, and moves, as Borges moved, through his more fantastic work to a later realism. Besides the commentary, which sets the pieces in the context of Borges's writing life, the book has a bio-bibliography, and notes on all the pieces chosen, which point out to the reader the web of interconnections and recurring themes woven by Borges's work. The essential one-volume Borges, this book is an unequaled introduction to the work of the master.

Plume, 1981.
ISBN: 9780525476542. 368 pp.
Edited by Emir Rodriguez Monegal and Alastair Reid.
Softcover. Very good.