What is his best short story and why?

There are a few candidates. Among them, my favorite is "The Circular Ruins." It's just such a magical story, and the di Giovanni translation contains some of Borges/di Giovanni's most evocative prose.

>>21983872 (OP)

I always loved Library of Babel, as it was my introduction to him. There was an awesome audiobook of it on YT with some great background music. I read him in late high school/early CEGEP and it changed my life

>>21983872 (OP)

I wish Borges wrote a novel. His stories are awesome, but there's nothing like the relationship one builds with a novel over a period of days/weeks.

>>21983872 (OP)

I’ve read every single one. “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbus Tertius” is conceptually the most interesting to me. My honorable mentions would be 

>The Aleph

>Library of Babel

>Funes, the Memorious

>The Secret Miracle

>Three Versions of Judas

>The South

>The Garden of Forking Paths

>The Witness

>Dreamtigers

>>21983872 (OP)

the poopman

it's not very well known but it is easily his best work

>>21983872 (OP)

What’s the one where the men pick up the knives and are taken over by them and duel each other to the death outside an Argentinian saloon or some shit? That one was good, maybe it’s just called “the duel”

>>21983872 (OP)

I need to reread my collection of Borges but I love his style. The Garden of Forking Paths is really good, something about murdering someone to send a coded message through the news is really cool to me. 

As for a more mundane story I can't remember the title of the story he wrote of meeting his younger self and discussing his life really stuck with me for some reason. Especially describing the onset of his own blindness to his younger self, comparing itself to a gentle settling of sunset on the entire world or something to that effect.

>>21983872 (OP)

Blood Meridian, or the Evening of the Redness in the West.



After this story, LITERATURE was never the same.

>>21983872 (OP)

I'm a big fan of The Secret Miracle as well

Yeah he actually wrote some pretty based Argentinian westerns, you're maybe thinking of either The Man on Pink Corner or The Story from Rosendo Juárez. Another similar one is The Intruder: Ii Kings, I, 26

That's the end of "The South".

"The Meeting." It's at a barbecue at a big house, not at a saloon.



It's a great one too. I'll never forget the line, "Even after the gauchos were dust, the knives knew how to fight."

>>21983872 (OP)

Some of my favorites have been already mentioned, so I'd like to include Death and the Compass, a nice variation on the detective stories with a lot of mystical references

Not to mention it has a really nice ending. Trust Borges to actually do subversion in a way that feels good and not cheap.
