Borges the Post-Orientalist

The chapter examines several works including ‘The East’, ‘A Thousand and One Nights’, and ‘Buddhism’, which are on subjects relating to the East, and finds conclusive evidence of a post-Orientalist optic in Borges’s writing at this point in his life. Japan inspires ‘The Stranger’ and ‘Nihon’, both included in The Limit and outstanding examples of Borges’s wit and craftsmanship. A comparison between ‘Nihon’ and ‘Story of the Warrior and the Captive Woman’ from an earlier collection illustrates Borges’s evolved approach to the binary opposition between civilization and barbarism, across the East–West divide. Two milongas are also studied in the context of the war in the South Atlantic (1982) and point to a disillusioned conclusion about Argentina 170 years on from formal independence in 1810.