Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges

Borges. I do not know when I first heard about him, it feels long ago somehow. Another of those figures, the awareness of whom, is as by spores fertilized in the mind. It is there, it feels like the name was always there. Yet I had not read him until I picked up this book few years ago. The short stories in it are thought-provoking and poetic. They question reality. Or rather how much of narrative, of books, of text and language that we somehow use to build our image of a reality.

Perhaps I make his writing sound absurd, but they are not. I could say they are fantastic, but that doesn't fit either (except for in the sense 'excellent'). There are few unrealistic elements in his stories, because they correspond to some coherent reality, only it is not always exactly ours. Borges is in any case an interesting writer and I have returned to this book several times to re-read his stories.