"The Library of Babel" (Spanish: La biblioteca de Babel) is a short story by Argentine author and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986), conceiving of a universe in the form of a vast library containing all possible 410-page books of a certain format.
The story was originally published in Spanish in Borges's 1941 collection of stories El Jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths). That entire book was, in turn, included within his much-reprinted Ficciones (1944). Two English-language translations appeared approximately simultaneously in 1962, one by James E. Irby in a diverse collection of Borges's works titled Labyrinths and the other by Anthony Kerrigan as part of a collaborative translation of the entirety of Ficciones.
Read more about The Library Of Babel: Plot Summary, Themes, Value As A Mathematical Thought Experiment, Philosophical Implications, Influence On Later Writers
Famous quotes containing the word library:
“... as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the ideal library is in the wish of its maker.”
—Carolyn Wells (1862–1942)