Borges's fiction, many critics agree, reflects the author's interest in cerebral games and puzzles rather than in human emotions and relationships. His characters, on the whole, are not individuals with whom a casual reader might readily empathize and identify.

Borgesian protagonists find themselves in situations and circumstances unlikely to occur to most people; his universes are inhabited by creatures whose experiences — though at times rather routine — almost always lead to unexpected or problematic ends. He also offers little certainty, no solutions, and much paradox. And although some of his stories follow a conventional plot line and are written in perfectly simple, straightforward language, they always surprise.

One of the best known narratives in this collection "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius," originally published in Ficciones (1944), recreates a completely imaginary universe of ordered symmetry where nouns do not exist in the language, and where objects disappear as...