The Book of Sand

First edition. Tall 8vo. Pp. [ii], 125, [2, blank]. Quarter-bound beige cloth over brown paper-covered boards, lettered in gilt to spine. Mustard endpapers. With an Author's Note and an Afterword by Borges. Jacket design by Randall Richmond (priced $7.95 to front flap). Translated from the Spanish by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in close collaboration with the author. Originally published in 1975 as El Libro de Arena by Emecé Editores, Buenos Aires.

Discolouration to dustwrapper spine, else Fine.

Author's last major story collection, being variations on favourite themes, and combining a plain and at times almost colloquial style with a fantastic plot. As he stated of the title story, first published in the October 25, 1976, issue of The New Yorker: "I have wanted to be loyal, in these exercises of a blind man, to the example of Wells: the conjunction of a plain style, sometimes almost oral, and an impossible argument." This, he achieves, in sublime style. "His stories – concise, playful, brimming with ideas – are among the century's supreme literary achievements." –Independent on Sunday