2 short stories by Jorge Luis Borges (from Ficciones)

"The Garden of Forking Paths" & "The Library of Babel" by Jorge Luis Borges (from his book Ficciones).

Both of these can be easily found online if you prefer to not get the book:
The Garden of Forking Paths
The Library of Babel

Total reading time is probably 45-60 minutes.

Two of the most iconic and widely anthologized stories in the Borges canon.

About the stories
The Garden of Forking Paths: A Chinese professor turned German spy in WWI England, fleeing capture, visits a sinologist who reveals the secret of his ancestor's labyrinthine "novel" — which turns out not to be a maze at all, but a structure built on branching, simultaneous time. What begins as a spy story becomes a meditation on fate and coded meaning, with a gut-punch of an ending.

The Library of Babel: Narrated by an inhabitant of an infinite library containing every possible book — meaning it contains every truth, every falsehood, and endless nonsense, all indistinguishable without a key. A meditation on meaning, chance, and the despair (and faith) of searching for order in near-infinite noise.

Why read them?

• Literary History: Two of the most influential and frequently taught stories in 20th-century fiction, foundational to postmodernism and magical realism, with "Library of Babel" still a go-to reference in math, philosophy, and information theory circles.
• Themes for Discussion: infinity vs. the finite, labyrinths literal and structural, chance vs. design, coded/hidden meaning, and how a story's form can double as its argument.

Length & genre

• Page Count: ~18–22 pages combined (each story is 8–14 pages)
• Reading Time: ~45–60 minutes combined
• Genre: Magical Realism / Philosophical Fiction / Short Fiction