Jorge Luis Borges wrote playful and deeply imaginative short stories that explore philosophy, paradox and the nature of existence, and Penguin Modern Classics introduced many of his most famous works, including Labyrinths, The Aleph and Fictions, to a wide audience. This collection includes seven of his most famous tales, which intrigue, inspire and mesmerize through their singular genius.

Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave. I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. Look here - my right hand has no index finger. Look here - through this gash in my cape you can see on my stomach a crimson tattoo - it is the second letter, Beth. On nights when the moon is full, this symbol gives me power over men with the mark of Gimel, but it subjects me to those with the Aleph, who on nights when there is no moon owe obedience to those marked with the Gimel. In the half-light of dawn, in a cellar, standing before a black altar, I have slit the throats of sacred bulls. Once, for an entire lunar year, I was declared invisible - I would cry out and no one would heed my call, I would steal bread and not be beheaded. I have known that thing the Greeks knew not - uncertainty. In a chamber of brass, as I faced the strangler's silent scarf, hope did not abandon me; in the river of delights, panic has not failed me. Heraclides Ponticus reports, admiringly, that Pythagoras recalled having been Pyrrhus, and before that, Euphorbus, and before that, some other mortal; in order to recall similar vicissitudes, I have no need of death, nor even of imposture.

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