By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘Everything and Nothing’ is a short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), although it is usually classified as a ‘parable’ rather than a ‘short story’ per se. Over the course of just a couple of pages, Borges gives us the life of a man who had no personality himself but created many different personalities through his work. It gradually becomes clear that the man is William Shakespeare.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Waiting’ is a 1950 short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Alternatively known as ‘The Wait’, the story is about an unnamed man who flees to Buenos Aires who escape his enemy, a gangster named Villari. The story focuses on the man’s time spent waiting for Villari to catch up with him.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The God’s Script’, sometimes translated under the title ‘The Writing of the God’, is a 1949 short story by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). The story concerns a Mayan priest who is imprisoned with a jaguar; the priest comes to realise that his god has hidden magic writing within the jaguar’s skin. ‘The God’s Script’ takes in, among other things, some quintessentially Borgesian themes including the infinite, the power of writing, and the individual who is granted access to arcane knowledge.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The House of Asterion’ is one of the shortest stories by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Even by his usual standards – many of his best-known stories stretch to only a few pages – it is a shorter tale among his oeuvre, running to just three pages in most editions. Published in 1947, the story is a kind of riddle where the narrator, Asterion, is revealed to be the Minotaur from the famous Greek myth. Borges reportedly wrote the story in just two days.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Witness’ is a short text by the Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Not quite a short story and yet not an essay either, ‘The Witness’ runs to just two paragraphs and one page of text, and is a meditation on the passing of the last people to remember, or to have witnessed, dead practices, cultures, and rituals.