The Aleph, published in Spanish as El Aleph in 1949, is a collection of short fiction by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. Published eight years after Fictions, its seventeen stories consolidate Borges’ move away from the thematic terrain of his early stories (published in English in A Universal History of Infamy (1935)), which displayed a preoccupation with Argentina’s criminal underworld. The Aleph, like the stories in Fictions, is overwhelmingly concerned with the themes of time, infinity and identity, and further establishes labyrinths and mirrors as the quintessentially Borgesian motifs. (After Borges, it would be difficult for any author to incorporate these elements into their work without seeming to write in his vast shadow). He is, by and large, uninterested in creating the illusion of fully-fleshed out protagonists, and he rarely pursues anything like a...
2681 words
Citation: O'Connell, Mark. "The Aleph". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 July 2012 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=14414, accessed 09 June 2026.]
