SOURCE: "The Road Back," in Sight and Sound, Vol. 45, No. 4, Autumn, 1976, p. 233.

An Argentine short story writer, poet, and essayist, Borges was one of the leading figures in modern literature. His writing is often used by critics to illustrate the contemporary view of literature as a highly sophisticated game. Justifying this interpretation of Borges's works are his admitted respect for stories that are artificial inventions of art rather than realistic representations of life, his use of philosophical conceptions as a means of achieving literary effects, and his frequent variations on the writings of other authors. In the following essay, which was first published in the Argentine journal Sur in 1937, Borges examines The Road Back.

In the winter of 1872, among the jacaranda furniture of a hotel whose balconies faced the treeless Victoria Plaza, don Jose Hernandez—enemy of Sarmiento and of Mitre—wanted to expose the degradation that the...