El Aleph

With the exception of "Emma Zunz" and "History of the Warrior and the Captive," the stories in this book, published five years after Ficciones, belong to the fantastic genre: "The Immortal" explores the effect immortality would have on humankind; "The Theologians" is a melancholic dream about personal identity; "Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz (1829-1874)," a commentary on Martín Fierro; "The Other Death," a fantasy about time; "Deutsches Requiem," an attempt to understand the tragic fate of Germany. The story "The Aleph" —first published in 1945 and which gave the book its title in 1949— addresses one of the recurring themes in Borges's literature: infinity. For in that resplendent sphere, all times and all spaces converge in an astonishing way.