Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Penguin Classics (2018), Edition: 01, 64 pages
Description
Fifty new books, celebrating the pioneering spirit of the Penguin Modern Classics series, from inspiring essays to groundbreaking fiction and poetry.
User reviews
LibraryThing member IonaS
This is an ingenious story apparently based on a true event related to an offensive by the British against the Germans in 1916.
It is told in the first person by an Asian called Yu Tsun who is obliged to do something that may result in his death.
He is a German spy.
He talks of having the
He searches his pockets and finds a revolver with a single bullet.
A man called Captain Richard Madden is after him. He is an Irishman in the the service of “England” (I presume he means Britain).
He tells us “with the eyes of a man already dead”. “I contemplated the --- day which would probably be my last”.
He goes to the house of a Dr Stephen Albert.
He is guided by children who tell him he should take the road to the left and bear left at every crossroad.
He knows that this is what to do to find the centre of certain labyrinths.
Yu Tsun is the great grandson of Ts’u Pen, Governor of Yunnan, who wrote a novel and created a maze “in which all men would lose themselves”.
His novel made no sense and nobody ever found the labyrinth/maze.
Yu Tsun comes to the house and Stephen Albert assumes he has come to see the garden of forking paths.
Yu Tsun says “the garden of my ancestor, Ts’ui Pen”.
Stephen Albert has in him “something of the priest and something of the sailor”. He is thus a man with Neptunian qualities (my comment).’
Albert tells Yu Tsun that at Ts’ui Pen’s death they found only “a mess of manuscripts”.
The book was a mass of contradictory rough drafts. The hero dies in the third chapter, while in the fourth he is alive.
No-one could find the labyrinth. “The novel’s confusion suggested that it was the labyrinth.”
Ts’ui Pen had written “I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths.”
In fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives, he chooses one at the expense of the others. But Ts’ui Pen chooses, simultaneously, all of them.
“He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. This is the cause of the contradictions in the novel.”
Albert reads a few pages of the book to Yu Tsun.
The subject of the book is time, but the word itself is not mentioned.
The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete picture of the universe.
Yu Tsun kills Albert with his one bullet: In this way the Chief comes to understand that the secret name of the city to be attacked is Albert.
Madden breaks into the house and arrests Yu Tsun, who is condemned to hang.
Personally, I find it strange that there was not any better way to communicate the name of the city than by killing someone.
It is told in the first person by an Asian called Yu Tsun who is obliged to do something that may result in his death.
He is a German spy.
He talks of having the
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“Secret”, the name of the exact site of the new British artillery park on the “Ancre”, whatever that is. He searches his pockets and finds a revolver with a single bullet.
A man called Captain Richard Madden is after him. He is an Irishman in the the service of “England” (I presume he means Britain).
He tells us “with the eyes of a man already dead”. “I contemplated the --- day which would probably be my last”.
He goes to the house of a Dr Stephen Albert.
He is guided by children who tell him he should take the road to the left and bear left at every crossroad.
He knows that this is what to do to find the centre of certain labyrinths.
Yu Tsun is the great grandson of Ts’u Pen, Governor of Yunnan, who wrote a novel and created a maze “in which all men would lose themselves”.
His novel made no sense and nobody ever found the labyrinth/maze.
Yu Tsun comes to the house and Stephen Albert assumes he has come to see the garden of forking paths.
Yu Tsun says “the garden of my ancestor, Ts’ui Pen”.
Stephen Albert has in him “something of the priest and something of the sailor”. He is thus a man with Neptunian qualities (my comment).’
Albert tells Yu Tsun that at Ts’ui Pen’s death they found only “a mess of manuscripts”.
The book was a mass of contradictory rough drafts. The hero dies in the third chapter, while in the fourth he is alive.
No-one could find the labyrinth. “The novel’s confusion suggested that it was the labyrinth.”
Ts’ui Pen had written “I leave to various future times, but not to all, my garden of forking paths.”
In fiction, when a man is faced with alternatives, he chooses one at the expense of the others. But Ts’ui Pen chooses, simultaneously, all of them.
“He thus creates various futures, various times which start others that will in their turn branch out and bifurcate in other times. This is the cause of the contradictions in the novel.”
Albert reads a few pages of the book to Yu Tsun.
The subject of the book is time, but the word itself is not mentioned.
The Garden of Forking Paths is an incomplete picture of the universe.
Yu Tsun kills Albert with his one bullet: In this way the Chief comes to understand that the secret name of the city to be attacked is Albert.
Madden breaks into the house and arrests Yu Tsun, who is condemned to hang.
Personally, I find it strange that there was not any better way to communicate the name of the city than by killing someone.
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Language
Original language
Spanish
Original publication date
1941
Physical description
64 p.; 6.3 inches
ISBN
9780241339053