Ficciones (First UK edition, 1962)

Jorge Luis Borges seventeen short pieces, in the original dustwrapper

Author

Publisher

Printing Details

First UK edition, first printing. Hardback in dustwrapper. 21 × 14cm, 174pp.

The seventeen pieces in Ficciones demonstrate the gargantuan powers of imagination, intelligence, and style of one of the greatest writers of this or any other century.

Borges sends us on a journey into a compelling, bizarre, and profoundly resonant realm; we enter the fearful sphere of Pascal’s abyss, the surreal and literal labyrinth of books, and the iconography of eternal return. More playful and approachable than the fictions themselves are Borges’s Prologues, brief elucidations that offer the uninitiated a passageway into the whirlwind of Borges’s genius and mirror the precision and potency of his intellect and inventiveness, his piercing irony, his scepticism, and his obsession with fantasy. To enter the worlds in Ficciones is to enter the mind of Jorge Luis Borges, wherein lies Heaven, Hell, and everything in between.

Condition

The book is in very good condition for age. There is some tanning and finger marking to the page edges, and a few minor spots of foxing. Previous owner's inoffensive and small name plate to front pastedown, and annotation to the rear pastedown marking the years it had been read (six times!). The dustwrapper is tanned to the spine, and with light wear to the joints. There is a little surface marking but otherwise it remains attractive. It has not been price-clipped and is now within a protective sleeve.