Book Of A Lifetime: Fictions

When it came to settling on a single book, in the end it had to be Borges – and it had to be this one. Other books have had a powerful impact on me, but none marked a turning-point in my understanding of the world and the written word in quite the same way. I first read these stories at the age of 18, while living in an abandoned shepherd's hut half way up a mountain in Crete.

I had found the spot by chance while exploring an empty stretch of beach, and moved in for the summer. I had just consumed 'The Brothers Karamazov' and 'The Magic Mountain' in rapid succession, and the brevity and intensity of Borges's writing came as a revelation. 

Richard Gwyn