Borges was an Argentine writer famous for his short stories. The worlds in his stories mess with your head: they're incredible, they're complicated, and they raise all kinds of existential questions, like "Who am I?" and "What are the limits of the world?"

Borges is often credited as the guy who opened up the way for the Magic Realist boom in South America. His experimentation with Surrealism influenced the generation of writers who emerged in the 1960s and popularized Magic Realism.

Labyrinths

Labyrinths is a collection of short stories and essays by Borges. He gets our heads spinning with stories about gardens with forking paths, a strange country called Uqbar, and a translator who tries to re-write Cervantes' famous novel Don Quixote.

"The Library of Babel"

"The Library of Babel," one of Borges' most famous short stories, takes place in—you guessed it—a library. But this is no ordinary library. For one thing, it's huge: there are endless bookshelves, there are duplicate books, and there are infinite corridors.

Borges is dealing with his favorite themes: time, order and disorder, and literature itself. It's all about the books, baby.

Chew on This:

Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths" raises all kinds of questions about time and reality. Get ready to scratch your head.

Imagine if the universe were a library. Well, Borges imagined it in his story "The Library of Babel."