The book of sand

Bornes likens the making of fiction to a game of chess, and it is to a game of chess that his fictions, once made, invite their readers ... 'He has one of the sharpest, most exhaustive literary intelligences one will ever meet with; there is endless instruction as well as endless pleasure to be had from reading his work', John Sturrock. The stories in The Book of Sand were all written in Borges's seventies. 'Blind. man's exercises', he calls them. Yet his way of conjuring with images - an infinite book, a one-sided disc, mirrors, a golden mask, a dagger is as potent and beautiful as ever, and he is incapable of losing his visionary touch. 'A marveHous collection to which one will return again and again ... But the book offers more than this, for its second half consists of exquisite poems ... suffice it to say here that Borges can still write a poem about the nightingale, and get away with it. A book to treasure' - Allan Massie in the Scotsman"....