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  • The Paris Review

    The Most Famous Coin in Borges

    by Anthony Madrid Nov 20, 2019 5 minutes

    Jorge Luis Borges at his office, Argentine National Library, 1973

    Let me see if I can summarize this famous short story. I’m going from memory.

    A guy—Borges—explains that the Zahir is a twenty-centavo coin. If you’re like me, you think, Okay, that’s what Argentines call that coin. Wrong. He goes on to explain that at other times in history the Zahir has been a vein in a piece of marble, a tiger, a brass astrolabe, and many other things. Now if you’re like me, you don’t know what he’s talking about. Welcome to the characteristic Borges beginning: a long first paragraph you know you’re only gonna understand upon a second or third reading.

    But to continue. A socialite woman, a model and fashionmonger, has suddenly died. Borges heaps a bunch of satirical prose upon her memory, and then admits he was in love with her. He goes

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