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In 1955 Jorge Luis Borges was made director of Argentina’s National Library, at about the time he was losing his sight; in a poem from those years he thanks God, “with magnificent irony”, for giving him at once the books and the night. Born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and schooled in Geneva, he never wrote a novel. His reputation rests on stories of a few pages: a library that contains every possible book, a man who rewrites Don Quixote word for word, an invented encyclopedia that slowly replaces the real world. They were collected in Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), and translated into English in 1962. Around them sit poems, essays, lectures and a bestiary of imaginary creatures. This guide covers his twelve key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 12 key books · 1923–1985 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Jorge Luis Borges’s best-known books are Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949), his two great story collections, followed by Other Inquisitions (1952), Dreamtigers (1960) and The Book of Sand (1975). Start with Ficciones, which holds “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, “The Library of Babel” and “The Garden of Forking Paths”. Many English readers first meet him through Labyrinths (1962), a selection that draws on both collections.
Where to Start with Jorge Luis Borges
If you want his defining book
→ Ficciones (1944) — the stories that made him known worldwide.
If you want his most personal book
→ Dreamtigers (1960) — short prose and poems, including “Borges and I”.
If you want stories with plainer plots
→ Brodie’s Report (1970) — the later stories he wanted to be straightforward.
If you want to hear him think aloud
→ Seven Nights (1980) — seven lectures given in Buenos Aires in 1977.
12 Jorge Luis Borges Books, in Order
Fervor de Buenos Aires
His first book, published in 1923, two years after he came back to Buenos Aires from Europe, where he had picked up the Spanish avant-garde movement Ultraism. The poems are about the city’s streets, patios and suburbs. Borges revised it heavily later in life, and later editions dropped more than a dozen of the original poems.
A Universal History of Infamy
Historia universal de la infamia, his first prose fiction, most of it first printed in the newspaper Crítica in 1933–34. It retells the lives of real criminals and impostors — the slave-stealer Lazarus Morell, the gangster Monk Eastman, the pirate Widow Ching, Billy the Kid as “Bill Harrigan” — with names and dates freely changed. It also contains “Streetcorner Man”, a story of knife-fighters on the edge of Buenos Aires.
Ficciones
Published by Editorial Sur in 1944, it combines the eight stories of The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) with a new section, Artifices; three more stories, including “The South”, were added in 1956. It contains “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, “The Library of Babel”, “Funes the Memorious” and “Death and the Compass”. It won the Argentine Writers’ Society’s Gran Premio de Honor and is on Le Monde’s list of 100 Books of the Century.
The Aleph
El Aleph, published by Losada in 1949 and expanded in 1952. It includes “The Immortal”, “Emma Zunz”, “The House of Asterion” (the Minotaur’s story told by the Minotaur), “Deutsches Requiem”, “The Zahir” and the title story, about a point in a Buenos Aires cellar from which every other point in the universe can be seen.
Other Inquisitions
Otras inquisiciones, his central book of essays: short pieces on Pascal, Coleridge, Hawthorne, Whitman, Wilde, Chesterton and Shaw, alongside “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins”, “Kafka and His Precursors” and “New Refutation of Time”. It appeared in English in 1964, translated by Ruth L. C. Simms.
The Book of Imaginary Beings
A bestiary of creatures from myth, folklore and literature, written with Margarita Guerrero. It first appeared in Mexico in 1957 as Manual de zoología fantástica, and in an expanded edition in 1967 as El libro de los seres imaginarios, which was translated as The Book of Imaginary Beings in 1969.
Dreamtigers
El hacedor, divided fairly evenly between short prose pieces and poems. It opens with a dedication to the poet Leopoldo Lugones and ends with “Borges and I”, about the gap between the man and the public writer; it also includes “Everything and Nothing” on Shakespeare and “Poem of the Gifts”. Borges regarded it as his most personal work. The English title, from one of its pieces, dates from the 1964 translation; Andrew Hurley later translated it as The Maker.
In Praise of Darkness
Elogio de la sombra, a late book mixing poems with a handful of short prose pieces such as “The Ethnographer”, “Pedro Salvadores” and “Legend”. The English translation appeared in 1974.
Brodie’s Report
El informe de Brodie, eleven stories, most of them set among the knife-fighters and ranchers of Argentina. In the foreword Borges says he wanted to write straightforward stories in the manner of late Kipling. It includes “The Interloper”, about two brothers who share a woman, and “The Gospel According to Mark”. It was translated as Doctor Brodie’s Report in 1971.
The Book of Sand
El libro de arena, thirteen late stories. In “The Other” an old Borges meets his nineteen-year-old self on a bench in Cambridge, Massachusetts; in the title story a Bible-seller sells the narrator an infinite book, which he finally hides in the basement of the National Library, reasoning that the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest.
Seven Nights
Siete noches, seven lectures given in Buenos Aires in 1977 and published in 1980: on Dante’s Divine Comedy, nightmares, the Thousand and One Nights, Buddhism, poetry, the Kabbalah and blindness. Eliot Weinberger’s English translation appeared in 1984.
The Conspirators
Los conjurados, published by Alianza in Madrid a year before his death: forty-four poems and prose poems, the last he wrote. The title poem is about the founding of the Swiss Confederation, which he describes as a conspiracy of men who decided to be reasonable.
In What Order to Read Jorge Luis Borges
Borges wrote no series and no novels, so you do not need to read in order. The useful split is between the stories of the 1940s, the essays and short pieces of the 1950s and 1960s, and the plainer late work he dictated after going blind. Many of the same ideas — infinite libraries, labyrinths, mirrors, doubles — return in all three.
In English the books are often regrouped: Labyrinths (1962) mixes stories, essays and parables, and Andrew Hurley’s Collected Fictions (1998) gathers all the stories in one volume. If you own either, follow the original collections inside it.
A reading path
1. Ficciones (1944)
2. The Aleph (1949)
3. Dreamtigers (1960)
4. Other Inquisitions (1952)
5. The Book of Sand (1975)
Everything Else Jorge Luis Borges Published
Beyond the 12 key books: 18 more, grouped by kind.
Open a group with the + to see every book in it.
Poetry
9
9 books · 1925–1984
- 1925Luna de enfrentehis second book of poems
- 1929Cuaderno San Martínpoems
- 1964El otro, el mismo (The Self and the Other)first as part of his collected poems, as a separate book in 1969
- 1972El oro de los tigres (The Gold of the Tigers)late poems
- 1975La rosa profundapoems
- 1976La moneda de hierropoems
- 1977Historia de la nochepoems
- 1981La cifrapoems
- 1984Atlastravel pieces with photographs
Stories
2
2 books · 1941–1983
- 1941The Garden of Forking Pathseight stories, later the first part of Ficciones
- 1983Shakespeare’s Memoryhis last four stories
Essays
5
5 books · 1925–1982
- 1925Inquisicionesearly essays
- 1930Evaristo Carriegoa book on the poet of the Buenos Aires suburbs
- 1932Discusiónessays
- 1936Historia de la eternidadessays on time and eternity
- 1982Nueve ensayos dantescosnine essays on Dante
With Adolfo Bioy Casares
2
2 books · 1942–1967
- 1942Six Problems for Don Isidro Parodidetective parodies as “H. Bustos Domecq”
- 1967Chronicles of Bustos Domecqsatirical sketches
The years · 1899–1986
Quick facts about Jorge Luis Borges
- Known for
- Short, puzzle-like stories about infinite libraries, labyrinths, mirrors and doubles that blur fiction, essay and scholarship, above all in Ficciones (1944).
- 1899
- Born in Buenos Aires
- 1944
- Ficciones
- 1961
- Formentor Prize, shared with Samuel Beckett
- 1986
- Dies in Geneva
- Born
- 24 August 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina
- Education
- Collège de Genève, baccalauréat 1918
- Worked
- Miguel Cané Municipal Library from 1938; director of the National Library, 1955–1973
- Honours
- Formentor Prize (1961, with Samuel Beckett); Cervantes Prize (1979, with Gerardo Diego)
- Married
- Elsa Astete Millán (1967); María Kodama (1986)
- Died
- 14 June 1986, Geneva; buried in the Cimetière des Rois
The red mark is 1944: Ficciones, the collection that made him known worldwide.
How Jorge Luis Borges Writes: Short Forms, Invented Books
Borges preferred the short story to the novel, which he thought needed padding; in the foreword to The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) he called the writing of vast books a laborious and impoverishing madness, and suggested pretending such books already exist and summarising them instead. That is what many of his stories do: “An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain” reviews a writer who never existed, and “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” is built around an encyclopedia of an imaginary planet.
He blurs fiction and fact on purpose. A Universal History of Infamy retells real criminals with dates and names changed; the stories use footnotes, real scholars and invented sources side by side, and the essays in Other Inquisitions often read like stories. The same small set of images — labyrinths, mirrors, libraries, tigers, doubles — returns throughout his work.
His sight failed in the 1950s, and his mother became his secretary. The later books are shorter pieces and verse he could compose in his head and dictate, and in the foreword to Brodie’s Report (1970) he says he set out to write straightforward stories in the manner of late Kipling. The puzzles remain, but the prose becomes plainer.
Watch
Borges on Firing Line
William F. Buckley Jr. talks with Borges in a 1977 episode of Firing Line about his life, his blindness and his writing.
Frequently asked questions about Jorge Luis Borges’s books
How many books has Jorge Luis Borges written?
About fifty, counting poetry, essays, story collections, lectures and books written with collaborators such as Adolfo Bioy Casares and Margarita Guerrero. Twelve are the key books on this page, from Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923) to The Conspirators (1985).
What are Jorge Luis Borges’s books in order?
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923), A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), The Aleph (1949), Other Inquisitions (1952), The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957), Dreamtigers (1960), In Praise of Darkness (1969), Brodie’s Report (1970), The Book of Sand (1975), Seven Nights (1980) and The Conspirators (1985). Years are those of the first Spanish editions.
Where should I start with Jorge Luis Borges?
With Ficciones (1944), the collection that made him known worldwide. If a whole book feels like too much, read “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” or “The Library of Babel” first; both are in it.
What is Jorge Luis Borges’s most famous book?
Ficciones (1944). It is on Le Monde’s list of 100 Books of the Century. In English, the 1962 selection Labyrinths, which draws on Ficciones, The Aleph and his essays, has been just as widely read.
Did Jorge Luis Borges write any novels?
No. He wrote short stories, essays, poems and lectures, and said he found novels needed padding. His longest fiction is a few dozen pages; with Adolfo Bioy Casares he also wrote detective parodies under the pen name H. Bustos Domecq.
What is the difference between Ficciones, Labyrinths and Collected Fictions?
Ficciones (1944) is one of his original Spanish collections. Labyrinths (1962, edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby) is an English selection of stories, essays and parables from several books. Collected Fictions (1998), translated by Andrew Hurley, gathers all his stories in one volume.
Was Jorge Luis Borges blind?
Yes. His sight failed gradually and he was completely blind by the late 1950s, shortly after he became director of Argentina’s National Library in 1955. He never learned Braille and dictated his later work; his mother acted as his secretary.
Why did Jorge Luis Borges never win the Nobel Prize?
He was nominated more than thirty times but never won. His politics are usually given as the reason: in 1976 he lunched with the Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and thanked him for “saving the country from ignominy”, and the same year he accepted an honour from Pinochet’s government in Chile. The Swedish Academy member Artur Lundkvist wrote that his political gestures made him an “improper Nobel laureate”. He did receive the Formentor Prize (1961) and the Cervantes Prize (1979).
Have Borges’s stories been adapted for film?
Several times. “Emma Zunz” became Leopoldo Torre Nilsson’s Días de odio (1954), “Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” became Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Spider’s Stratagem (1970), and Alex Cox filmed “Death and the Compass” in 1996. “The Interloper” has been adapted more than once.
When did Jorge Luis Borges die?
On 14 June 1986 in Geneva, aged 86, a few months after marrying María Kodama. He is buried in the Cimetière des Rois in Geneva.
Footnotes
- Jorge Luis Borges — Wikipedia
- Ficciones — Wikipedia
- A Universal History of Infamy — Wikipedia
- Borges, Jorge Luis 1899–1986 — Encyclopedia.com
- Borges Poetry II — Shipwreck Library
- Firing Line: Borges, South America’s Titan — American Archive of Public Broadcasting
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“Nadie rebaje a lágrima o reproche / esta declaración de la maestría / de Dios, que con magnífica ironía / me dio a la vez los libros y la noche.”
— Jorge Luis Borges, “Poema de los dones”, El hacedor (1960)
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