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| This short story features many of Borges' signature themes, including ], ], and ]. The concept of this infinite library is often compared to ]. | This short story features many of Borges' signature themes, including ], ], and ]. The concept of this infinite library is often compared to ]. | ||
| The complete english translation of this story can be found here: | The complete english translation of this 2,675-word story can be found here: | ||
| External link: | External link: | ||
Revision as of 00:03, 6 March 2003
"The Library of Babel" is a short story appearing in the books Fictions and Labyrinths by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.
The story describes a vast universe consisting entirely of a library, told from the perspective of one of the universe's inhabitants (or librarians). Though the order of the books is random, it is known by the inhabitants that the books contain every possible combination of lower case letters and spaces up to a certain length. Though the majority of the books in this universe are pure gibberish, the library also contains within its volumes every coherent book up to that length ever written, along with an innumerable amount of unwritten books. The narrator notes that the library must contain all useful information, including predictions of the future, biographies of any person, and translations of every book in all languages. Despite this glut of information, all books are totally useless to the reader, leaving the librarians in a state of suicidal despair.
This short story features many of Borges' signature themes, including infinity, reality, and labyrinths. The concept of this infinite library is often compared to Borel's dactylographic monkey theorem.
The complete english translation of this 2,675-word story can be found here: External link: