The Six Riddles of Isidro Parodi

★ A detective-story collection by Latin American literary master Borges

★ The first imprisoned detective in history makes his debut

[About the Authors] Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) was an Argentine poet, novelist, critic, and translator, and a master of Spanish-language literature. Born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899, he spent part of his youth traveling around Europe with his family. He published his first poetry collection, Fervor de Buenos Aires, in 1923, his first essay collection, Inquisiciones, in 1925, and his first short-story collection, A Universal History of Infamy, in 1935, gradually establishing his place in Argentina’s literary world. His best-known poetry collections include Notebook of San Martin and The Gold of the Tigers; his story collections include The Garden of Forking Paths and The Aleph; and his essay collections include A History of Eternity and Other Inquisitions. These works won him international acclaim. He also translated works by writers such as Oscar Wilde, Virginia Woolf, and William Faulkner.

He served as director of the National Library of Argentina and as a professor of literature at the University of Buenos Aires. Among the many literary honors he received were the Argentine National Prize for Literature, the Formentor International Publisher’s Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, the Balzan Prize, the Cino Del Duca Prize, and the Cervantes Prize. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 14, 1986.

Adolfo Bioy Casares (1914–1999) was an Argentine journalist, novelist, and translator. His novel The Invention of Morel, published in 1940, won the first Buenos Aires Municipal Literature Prize. He later received the Cervantes Prize, the Argentine Writers’ Association Honorary Prize, the French Legion of Honor, and other distinctions.

He met Jorge Luis Borges in 1932, and the two became close friends. They collaborated on numerous works, including a series of short stories, plays, and fantasy tales written under the pseudonyms Honorio Bustos Domecq and Benito Suarez Lynch.

[Synopsis] This detective novel was coauthored by Argentine writers Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares under the pseudonym Honorio Bustos Domecq.

Borges was fascinated by detective fiction and sought to push beyond the limits of the detective’s abilities. The result was Isidro Parodi, “the first imprisoned detective.” Compared with the blind detective Max Carrados, the gentleman detective Auguste Dupin, and Prince Zaleski, who solves mysteries from afar, Parodi, who never leaves his cell, is even more remarkable. Falsely convicted and imprisoned in Cell 273 of a Buenos Aires prison, he solves six baffling cases.

The six mysteries in the novel playfully imitate classic detective-fiction setups from works such as Murder on the Orient Express and The Purloined Letter. Paying tribute to these stories while introducing twists and variations, they make for tales full of intellectual delight and human warmth.