"A universal history of infamy" by Jorge Luis Borges

A bijou set of very short biographies of rascals and villains, some of them invented. Borges, who also wrote Labyrinths and The Book of Sand, is famous for his short stories. What marks them out is their scholarship (or their assumed scholarship), their invention, and the crystal beauty of his prose. A sentence like "Noons were heavy, afternoons endless." (p 48) is so short, so unfussy and yet so redolent of imagery.

Other moments

• “Bogle was no different from other men, with nothing more distinctive about him than a longstanding, shamefaced fear that made him linger at street crossings - glancing east, west, south, and north - in utter dread of the vehicle that might one day take his life.” (p 32) 
• “The neighbourhood production of some faded musical comedy, with its chorus line of obvious housewives posing as pirates and hoofing it on a briny deep of unmistakable cardboard.” (p 41) 
• "each evening. high, shiftless flocks of airy dragons rose from the ships of the imperial squadron and came gently to rest on the enemy decks and surrounding waters." (p 48)

December 2017; 131 pages

This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God