However, they turn out to be one and the same. So, to an almost metaphysical degree – ‘metaphysical’ in that it follows the idea underpinning metaphysical poetry of taking an extended metaphor and then running with it until it becomes practically absurd – ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’ is an extended analogy between the maze and the novel, both of which, we are told early on, Ts’ui Pen wished to built or construct.

As we read a detective story there will be other suspects whom we may believe to be guilty of the crime, only to discover that our suspicions were unfounded and another character is the guilty party. The best collection of Borges’ writings, Labyrinths (Penguin Modern Classics), is so named because the metaphor of the labyrinth recurs throughout so many of his works.Ī labyrinth is an apt metaphor for a detective story because both traditionally have only one correct ‘route’ through them, but surrounding this correct path (the way out of the labyrinth, the journey towards solving the crime or mystery) are many other tangents, red herrings, and false trails. The idea is to create an infinite narrative containing every narrative possibility. In a way that echoes quantum theory and in particular, the concept of Schrödinger’s cat, characters are simultaneously dead and alive, having been killed off in one chapter only to turn up alive and kicking in the next.

In a way that prefigures the modern-day ‘narrative’ of computer and video games, where multiple paths through the game are possible, Ts’ui Pen’s novel doesn’t so much reject linearity – such a complete rejection would be possible, when we are still required to read forwards, turning one page at a time – as build simultaneity, and multiple possible outcomes, into its linear structure.

Luis borges labyrinths