The Book of Imaginary Beings

Borges, Jorge Luis

E P Dutton, 1969

[Magical Realism] Stated First Edition. Hardcover and dust jacket. Dust jacket in protective mylar cover. Good binding and cover. Shelf wear. Bookplate on front end page. Clean, unmarked pages. 256 p., 24 cm. 

  "Borges, in compiling this modern variation of the traditional bestiary, has drawn on his vast knowledge of world literature. In the 120 articles that make up this book, the reader will meet not only such celebrated inventions of man's imaginations as the trolls, the Minotaur, the Cheshire Cat, the Golem, and the six-tusked white elephant that foretold the birth of Buddha, but also metaphysical fancies like Condillac's sensitive statue, Steiner's thermal beings, and Jane Lead's creature whose substance is bliss. In the lucid honed prose that is his hallmark, Borges draws parallels from many sources ranging through time and space: China, India, Scandinavia, the Americas; the writings of Poe, Kafka, Swedenborg, and Pliny; antiquity, mythologies, and travelers' yarns." - E. P. Dutton  

"Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges exerted a strong influence on the direction of literary fiction through his genre-bending metafictions, essays, and poetry. Borges was a founder, and principal practitioner, of postmodernist literature, a movement in which literature distances itself from life situations in favor of reflection on the creative process and critical self-examination. Widely read and profoundly erudite, Borges was a polymath who could discourse on the great literature of Europe and America and who assisted his translators as they brought his work into different languages." - Poetry Foundation