Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Here is a handsome edition of one of Borges ficciones, in a translation first published in Labyrinths in 1962. Its an important story in the Borges canon, incorporating most of the authors philosophical and esthetic preoccupations in a typically brief compass. With great solemnity and a convincing array of scholarly detail (including annotated references to imaginary books and articles), Borges contocts a fable of an alternate world and its infiltration of our own. The reality of Tlon is idealist: material objects have no existence; language has no nouns; its principal discipline is psychology, since its inhabitants see the universe as nothing but a series of mental processes. A series of 24 illustrations accompanies the text. Their disturbing resemblances to our reality make them appropriate reflections of Borgess imaginative constructs. -- The Kingston Whig-Standard