The book of sand - Jorge Luis Borges

The sand book is a book written by Jorge Luis Borges, published in 1975, where we are presented with a series of stories that address different topics, and where you can appreciate the mystery and uncertainty. It is an inner revelation that invites us to see beyond what we are. Hence, the characters of the quantum "The Other" are called the same as the author. It is a play on words that persuades the reader and invites him to decipher the implicit message of the work.

📖 Characters from "The Sand Book":

Within the stories in this book, we can find that the narrators are in the first person and tell us their own story. We find characters that have the same name as the author Jorge Luis Borges. We also find characters immersed in politics, such as Alejandro Ferri. We also find El otro, Urica, La cautiva, El Malón, Moreira, El Alto Rey, El poeta, Alguien, Borges, among others.

📒 Summary and synopsis of the work:

In this book the author presents us with a series of stories with different themes, and each story presents an epilogue. Here we will talk about the most outstanding stories within the work. The first story is titled "The Other" and is narrated in the first person, he was sitting on a bench, looking at a river and a large building that captivated him. On the other side of the bank, someone was there and begins to whistle, this one was called El Otro, and the protagonist begins to question him, and thus he realizes that both are called Jorge Luis Borges. But The Other was younger.

As for the second story, it is titled "Urica" ​​and it also has a first-person narrator, and the actions take place when he meets Urica in New York. Both were young and begin to establish a beautiful friendship, and the protagonist is attracted to the girl, but she did not have much time to live. Then the young man realized that it was all a dream, and that Urica only belonged to his dream world.

The third story is titled “El congreso”, which is considered a political essay, since the main character is Alejandro Ferri and he operates in the political world. Its main purpose was to form a congress to establish values ​​and compassion.

The fourth story is "There are more things" where the story begins when the protagonist finds out that his uncle Edwin had passed away, before being able to make his last test at the University of Austin. So he couldn't go see his uncle one last time. Some time later, he was able to go to his uncle's house and realized that he had strange habits from another planet, which kept people away from that place.

The fifth story is called "The Sect of the Thirty" in which a manifesto is exposed that all members of the sect must abide by. It states that everyone must sell their property to give it to the poor, and as for men, they can desire any woman, but adultery is not allowed. In addition, no man could enter the churches, and every abominable act was repudiated by the high authorities.

The sixth story is “The night of the gifts”, in which the experiences of a group of people who are in a confectionery are related. One of these people is an old man, who tells us about his experience having lived with wolves for a long time. La Cautiva also appears, who tells that she was harassed by Malón, who belonged to the tribe, but Moreira was able to rescue her and they fell in love.

The seventh story is titled "The Mirror and the Mask" in which there is a dialogue between the High King and a court poet. This poet had to write a poem every year for the King. But he presented texts that broke with the standards established for that time. However, the King supported him. So he gave him a gold mask. Time passed, and the poet returned to the palace, and a single line of a poem that he dedicated to the King caused him to lose his throne and become a beggar.

One of the last stories is "Undr", in which there is a manuscript by Adrián Bremen, an Argentine who died in the 11th century. The ninth story is titled "Utopia", where the narrator begins by describing everything he observes in his path. And he meets a strange man of great height, called "someone" since he did not have a specific name.

The tenth story is "The Bribe" that tells us about an English teacher named Enza Winthrop, an old English teacher. In the penultimate story of this book is "Avelino Arredondo", where the events that occurred in Montevideo in 1987 are related. Then we will find "El Disco", another of the stories in this work, where the narrator is in the first person and is a woodcutter who talks nostalgically about his brother

Finally this work closes with "The Sand Book", where the narrator has the same name as the author. Here the narrator receives a very peculiar book that had an uneven pagination, in which when leafing through its pages, they could not be returned to the previous one. This rare book was called "Holy Writ"

📚 Analysis of "The Sand Book"

In "The Sand Book" the author combines the realm of reality with fiction. It provides us with metaphysical explanations, and its narrations are in the first person. In addition it interferes in their stories, since we can notice that the characters in some stories are called the same as the author. Which is a rather curious fact when analyzing the author's purpose. Likewise, it shows us realistic stories that offer us historical data and points out important events at certain times.

Finally this work "The Sand Book" shows us a series of stories that account for a narrative discourse that transports us to utopian spaces, but also provides us with significant historical contexts. Therefore we find mysterious characters like "The Other", "Someone" but also realistic characters like "The High King" and "Alejandro Ferri"

📚 Quotes

“Loneliness doesn't hurt me; enough effort is to tolerate yourself and your hobbies ”

 "I felt what we feel when someone dies: the grief, already useless, that nothing would have cost us to have been better"

 "As a boy, I accepted those ugliness as they accept those incompatible things that only for the reason of coexisting are called the universe"

 "Except for the harsh pages of history, memorable events do without memorable phrases"

 “I notice that I am getting older; an unequivocal symptom is the fact that I am not interested or surprised by news, perhaps because I notice that nothing essentially "