The image of a countryless writer is misleading. Borges is in fact one kind of typically Latin American writer, who takes cosmopolitanism to a connoisseur's level, but in an absolutely Latin American way. Discuss this view of Borges's short story writing, with detailed reference to the stories of Ficciones that you have read.
Borges's writing was seen for a long time not to be typically South American in its focus on the abstract and illusive elements of the Universe or delving into the nature of the human condition, instead of advocating changes in social conditions or highlighting inequalities between racial groups. This style for a long time gained him much criticism for a rejection of the values and socio-political situation of his homeland in favour of a world of unreality, something which Borges himself has answered with the statement: "I think it is a writer's duty to be writer, and if he can be a good writer, he is doing his duty I am an antagonist of littérature engagée because I think it stands on the hypothesis that a writer can't write what he wants to- (Di Giovanni, 1973, 59) At first examination Borges's stories in the collection Ficciones can be perceived as based merely in this world of unreality, because he the good writer' is describing powerful ideas of what it is to be human and how one experiences reality, fate and the inner self. These stories are often set in exotic locations as in La loterí de Babilonia and La Biblioteca de Babel or unknown places as in Las ruinas circulares, which add to the experience in the reader of fantasy and a distance from the world which we inhabit. In this essay I want to look at some of the stories from this collection and show that although his stories are clearly based in a world of unreality, he is by no means a countryless writer and has a great relevance to Latin America.
A continuing theme amongst the writings of Borges is the idea of reality in the imagined and unreality in the real world, and that there is nothing truer than the dream even the dreamer who is dreaming it.
