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One might have thought that Borges would have used the twilight of his life to distil the great edifice of his knowledge and offer the awry world some concrete wisdom. In doing so, he might have struck back at those critics who think of his writing as nebulous – a little too dreamy. Yet, he produces The Book of Sand, something profound, concise and vaporous - a collection of dreams.

It was Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, or, strictly speaking, Dr Watson, which came to this reader’s mind on starting The Book of Sand. The fables’ narrators are disarmingly earnest to share with the reader the disturbance on their mind. With the confidante’s compliance, the reader is hypnotically joined to Borges’ world. And it is with patience and growing suspense that he or she absorbs the introduction.

The book a window into an unstable world which could be a dream, memory, metaphor or, even, reality. Almost as quickly as the story began, it has ended. The reader is left grasping for air, for the final retort to the stories tends to be left unwritten.

The reader can be found, between story, bemused and, even, resigned, as if confronted The nightmarishness of the infinite, the prevalence of doubt, the possibility of moreby a benign Sphinx. Yet, this feeling is overruled by the stronger desire to revisit the strange world of hazy vignette and find out the meaning – the mystery that Borges will only speak of in a sigh. That Borges’ has a meaning seems quite clear, for the reader encounters repeating experiences in his story, the nightmarishness of the infinite, the prevalence of doubt, the possibility of more. And, Borges characters, such as Ulrikke the eponymous girl of “gold and softness,” fill the dreams with convictions: “Forever is a word mankind is forbidden to speak.” Yet, Borges keeps his face turned, the ghosts of his stories evaporating before their meaning can be clear.

It is by listening to Borges carefully, that his voice might be heard. In the titular story, The Book of Sand, Borges evokes an infinite book, without start or end, which his narrator must abandon for the sake of his sanity. Possessing or chasing the infinite is madness and, perhaps, likewise, our askance at Borges to reveal his Truth, is of the same folly. Perhaps, Borges’ Truth is infinite and impossible and this is why he marks it with hints in dreams.

Phrases jump out of the page: “Words are symbols that assume a shared reality,” (The Congress)  a doubt about the power of words which then extends to the possibility of awareness, especially in youth: “The other man dreamed me, but did not dream me rigorously - “ (The Other).  Borges, it seems, doubts the possibility of human understanding and advancement and this is most disturbingly explored in A Weary Man’s Utopia.

If he has little faith in people or words, what do Borges’ stories celebrate? For, before being silenced by the infinite, a haunting joy can be seen, if not heard, in many of Borges’ dreams. Love, togetherness, enlightenment and freedom. These are the memories of Borges’ narrators and his narrators are forms of himself. In The Book of Sand, Borges is cherishing the acrid scent of past experience and, in recording them, he memorialises moments of his life, as seen via the prism of hindsight.

At the end of The Book of Sand, Borges apologises for his “hurried” Afterword. Invited to explain the stories to the reader, he merely rushes through them, mentioning influences, sometimes using only one sentence for a story. It seems that Borges is not really sorry. For he does not much care for explanations, or, even the reader’s satisfaction. He cares, in his old age, more than anything, to dream of experience and this, it seems, is the secret.