Labyrinths - Jorge Luis Borges

The cover of latest edition of this book depicts rows of people with their backs turned to the viewer. It is a cold, uninviting cover, one that should be on a Kafka or an Orwell, not a Borges. Picking up the edition that I own, you get a far better idea of what this book is about. We are looking up a spiral staircase toward a painted ceiling of heaven, or perhaps looking down the staircase, to the floor of a forgotten library. Maybe even we are looking at a mirrored floor, which reflects a staircase above us. We could be on a stairway to the heavens; we could be an infinite spiral of thought; we could be the universe itself - a grain of sand in a painted spiral ...

This extraordinary book collects together many of Borges's 'fictions' in one volume. To describe the Argentinan author as a unique innovator is a massive understatement. He seems to see the world through a pair of ill fitting reading glasses and his voice is like the last words of your favourite kindly imaginary uncle. Since he died he is probably as famous for his description of the falklands war: 'two bald men fighting over a comb', but he was really a universal talent who deserves to be universally known. These aren't really stories as such. They're more like works of art, artifice and thought, like Escher’s paintings, ...