The Book of Imaginary Beings (1957)
Author: Jorge Luis Borges (and Margarita Guerrero) [trans. Andrew Hurley; ills. Peter Sis]
Format: Paperback
The Book of Imaginary Beings is a beastiary consisting entirely of fictional creatures compiled by Jorge Luis Borges (better known for other work). The book consists of a series of some large number of short entries on various creatures described in mythology or fiction in the style of an encyclopedia. Inevitably, the creatures are all primarily sourced from European/Western cultures and writings, with some smattering of animals from Arabic folklore (mostly whatever can be found in the Arabian Nights) and Chinese mythology. Despite the obvious Western-lean, the entries are generally quite whimsical and fun to read, and the illustrations are great.
I am very curious where Borges managed to find some of these creatures; a lot of them, as far as I can tell from Google, only appear in this book and nowhere else. This is especially baffling for some of the few Chinese creatures (what even is a “mirror fish” am I just a fake Chinese person don’t answer that), where you would think there’s no way he even knew enough to make up something. There are also some wild mistakes (??) in the text, where he seems to have genderbent the story of Arjuna and Ulupi (go off transfem Arjuna). I think my biggest complaint about the text is that the translator chose to put all of the entries in alphabetical order, which means you jump around a lot in terms of theme / location / etc. while trying to read it. You’re not supposed to read it straight through etc etc but even then it would’ve been cool to be able to more directly compare different creatures by any sort of grouping other than hey they share a first letter ish.