The Garden of Forking Paths is the ninth title in Short Stops, a series from Conversation Tree Press dedicated to bringing exceptional shorter works of fiction to life through beautifully bound, letterpress-printed, limited editions that begin shipping immediately upon announcement. 

---

With artwork by Pablo Auladell
Translated by Helen Temple and Ruthven Todd

“This web of time—the strands of which approach one another, bifurcate, intersect or ignore each other through the centuries—embraces every possibility. We do not exist in most of them. In some you exist and not I, while in others I do, and you do not, and in yet others both of us exist.”

Few have done more with the short story than the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In pieces sometimes no more than a few pages long, he created labyrinths, infinite libraries, and entire imagined worlds. His stories remain among the most influential works of twentieth-century literature.

First published in 1941 as the title story of El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan and later collected in Ficciones, The Garden of Forking Paths is among Borges’s best-known works.

Set in England in 1916, during the First World War, it follows Yu Tsun, a Chinese spy working for Germany, who has a secret to deliver to Berlin and a pursuer close behind. Caring nothing for a “barbarous” Germany, he means to prove to a superior wary of his race that a man like him can strike a decisive blow for its armies. His flight leads him to a scholar’s house in the countryside, where he once more encounters a puzzle left behind by his own ancestor.

It is a detective story, by Borges’s own account, but also a meditation on time, not as a single line, but as an infinite number of possibilities, all unfolding at once.

Pablo Auladell’s artwork, rather than capturing specific scenes in sequence as our illustrations usually do, forms what he calls “a visual envelope for the story.” Glimpsed as though in a dream or through a mirror, his three drawings expand on this concept of non-linear time and serve as the perfect complement to Borges’s text (more from Pablo below).

Tony’s roots are in Guyana, so it’s a particular pleasure to publish a writer from closer to home.

N.B. This is the first of three Borges titles we’ll be publishing as Short Stops, with the other two following in 2027. All three share a common design language (marbled paper patterns, typography, text paper, etc.) and all feature artwork by Pablo Auladell. As Short Stops do not come with rights, ordering this edition doesn’t reserve a copy of the next.

Edition Information

The Garden of Forking Paths is a limited edition of 500 unnumbered copies. A brief overview of the edition, with additional details below:

• Artwork: Pablo Auladell has contributed three pieces of artwork, printed separately and individually tipped in by hand.
• Typography: Interior design and typography are by Tony Geer.
• Letterpress printing: Scott Vile at Ascensius Press printed the edition in Maine, United States, on watermarked Hahnemühle Biblio 150gsm mould-made paper, the most luxurious paper we’ve used on a Short Stop.
• Binding: Quarter-bound in book cloth and custom hand-marbled papers by Jemma Lewis. The endpapers are GF Smith Colorplan with a linen finish.
• Format: The books have a trim size of 6in × 9in and 32 pages including front and back matter.
• Signatures: All copies are signed by the artist.
• Publication price: US$140.
• Availability: In stock and shipping from Canada and England.

As with every entry in our Short Stops series, the author’s name and title are foil stamped on the spine for a uniform look on the shelf.

Availability

Copies are now available to collectors who ordered copies of China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station that came with publisher’s rights (i.e. Deluxe copies #1–200 and all Lettered copies), or those who had rights transferred to them. If you’re not sure whether you have publisher’s rights, you can check by logging in to our Rights Lookup page.

An email has been sent with a private link to order, and copies will begin shipping today, September 28th, 2026. If you did not receive an email and you believe you should have, please let us know.

Remaining copies will then be made available to the public on Thursday October 1st at 10 a.m. ET.

Shipping

Copies ship from Ontario, Canada and from England (for European collectors). For US collectors, we are only shipping with Canada Post and paying pre-processing fees on our end. While we do not expect any brokerage or other fees to be charged on shipments, we cannot guarantee this as we have no control over US government policy. Please see here for more information for US collectors specifically. 

Please note that import duties, taxes, brokerage charges, and any other fees levied by couriers or government agencies are the collector’s responsibility.

For orders being fulfilled from Canada (i.e. everywhere except Europe), we can combine orders for this title with any other book we have in stock. 

Artwork by Pablo Auladell

Pablo Auladell’s artwork eschews our usual approach of illustrating specific scenes from the narrative. We’ve shared his statement about the artwork below, but please note it includes spoilers.

The first thing I would say is that my drawings are not intended to follow a narrative sequence. Rather, they are constructed to create an atmosphere of poetic and philosophical mystery—a visual envelope for the story. The narrative is already contained within the text itself. In that sense, the order of the images is not especially important, although I still think the sequence I suggested works best.

My aim was to create three mysterious images by playing with the concepts Borges explores and suggests in the story: the idea of time not as linear or consecutive but as simultaneous, where everything happens at once; the existence of parallel dimensions in which every possible outcome of a life choice unfolds; and the labyrinth, where the hero ultimately encounters himself and his true nature.

The point of view I adopted in the drawings is similar to that of Delvaux’s paintings, where we witness the scenes as though we were peering into a dream... or passing through a mirror. The gardens may be the same garden—or they may not. They may be some of the many possible gardens, in keeping with Borges’s concept. What matters, it seems to me, is that something mysterious, ambiguous, and unsettling reveals itself in these images.

In No. 01, Yu Tsun enters and leaves the scene, comes and goes, all at once, while in the background Albert waits for him with the lantern... to lead him toward two stories, two possibilities.

In No. 02, the fountain, with its mysterious image, together with the two warriors, alludes to the past—to Yu Tsun’s writer ancestor. Poetically, the fountain has always symbolized the past flowing into the present: listening to the song of the water as the song of a bygone time, drinking from ancient waters, from tradition, and so on. And once again there is ambiguity and multiplicity: the paths that fork and offer different outcomes—white roses and dark roses, one warrior or the other, two armies, life and death—yet all at once, all within the same instant, the same vision.

In No. 03, the bust of Janus—the mythical double-faced figure who looks both to the past and to the future—divides the image into two possible realities. On the left, Yu Tsun and Albert are friends, contemplating, for example, the flight of ancient white cranes. On the right, they are enemies, and Yu Tsun murders Albert; no longer do the cranes of friendship take flight, but rather warplanes.

The figure in the lower part of the composition is Yu Tsun’s pursuer, Madden. As for the wall and the threshold, my intention was to depict the exit from the garden—but in truth, that is beside the point. It makes little difference whether it is the entrance gate or the threshold leading out... into another possibility.

And then there is the moon. I placed it at the center so that it, too, would somehow mark a division between possibilities and destinies. With its presence—at once unsettling and serene—it divides the scene in two, like the eye of fate.

Illustration Placement

Each illustration has been printed separately and tipped into the book block by hand. Tipping in by hand gives us complete freedom of illustration placement—each one can sit against any page in the book, allowing it to be placed exactly where we need it to be. 

About Pablo Auladell

Pablo Auladell (Spain, 1972) is a cartoonist and author of illustrated books and graphic novels. He began working as an illustrator in 2000, always closely linked to literature and books, alternating between commissioned work and his own original projects. In recent years he has also worked in the film industry, collaborating with director Gonzalo Suárez, illustrating two short films for him.

The fruit of these years of intense work is nearly one hundred published books, some of them translated into several languages, the Ministry of Culture Award for Best Illustrations in Children’s and Young Adult Books in 2005, the Revelation Author Award at the Barcelona Comic Fair in 2006, and the National Comic Award in 2016, as well as dozens of talks and courses taught in Europe and the Americas.

Auladell was a lecturer at the Master of Illustration Ars in Fabula in Macerata (Italy) between 2009 and 2019, and president of the Association of Professionals of Valencian Illustration (APIV) between 2009 and 2013.

Custom Hand-Marbled Paper by Jemma Lewis

The hand-marbled paper for this edition was created by Jemma Lewis. We worked with Jemma to create the marbling for all three of our Borges Short Stops at once: the same pattern throughout but with a different colour for each title. Each colour matches the second colour of that book’s letterpress printing, used on the title page and for shorter passages of text.

Hahnemühle Biblio 150gsm Paper

Hahnemühle Biblio 150gsm paper is a luxurious mould-made paper from Hahnemühle FineArt GmbH, a paper company founded in Germany in 1584, and one that we would typically use on a Lettered or Deluxe Edition. Each sheet features the iconic rooster watermark. 

Typography

The title is set in LTC Goudy Thirty, a typeface that began life in 1942, when Frederic Goudy drew it for a commission that never went ahead. Lanston Monotype suggested releasing it after his death, naming it for “-30-,” the mark journalists used to signal the end of a story. Goudy died in 1947, and the typeface was finally released in 1953.

The text is set in Borges, a typeface designed by Argentine type foundry PampaType as a tribute to the work of Jorge Luis Borges.

Letterpress Printing

The text of the edition was letterpress printed at Ascensius Press on Hahnemühle Biblio 150gsm paper, giving each page a rich, tactile feel. 

Under the direction of Scott Vile, the Ascensius Press offers book design, letterpress printing, and production coordination services, working with authors, publishers, and libraries. They publish their own letterpress editions, and design and produce letterpress and offset works for many preeminent private libraries.

About Short Stops

Books in our Short Stops series are a little different from our other editions that come in multiple states. They:

• Are announced and offered for sale when they are completely finished and in hand, with shipping beginning on the same day we begin accepting orders. 
  
• Feature shorter works of fiction.
• Have a trim size of 6in by 9in, slightly smaller than our other 6.7in by 9.5in books.
• Have no rights associated with them and do not include a slipcase.
• Are always offered to current Deluxe and Lettered publisher’s rights holders first, even though they have no rights attached to them. Rights holders may skip it entirely without losing rights to the next book from the Press, and having a copy of the most recently published book in the Short Stops series does not give any rights to the next in the series.

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges was born into an intellectual family in Buenos Aires, in 1899. During his youth, the family lived in several countries including Spain and Switzerland. Because of his British ancestry, Borges learned English before Spanish, yet also acquired French and German at a young age. After World War I, Borges returned to Buenos Aires where he began his literary career, publishing in periodicals such as the prestigious Martin Fierro and Sur. In 1923, Borges published his first collection of poetry, entitled Fervor de Buenos Aires.

During the 1930’s, Borges gained fame as a critic, a columnist, and a translator, translating such authors as Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Herman Melville. In late 1938 after the death of his father, Borges suffered a traumatic blow to the head, from which he nearly died. As a consequence of the ordeal, Borges also made a shift in style, and subsequently began to garner more attention. In 1941 The Garden of Forking Paths was published, Borges’ first anthology of short stories, but it was not until 1948 that the collection was translated into English and Borges would begin receiving international recognition. In 1961, he was awarded the international Prix Formentor (along with Samuel Beckett), his first international prize. His most notable works include the anthologies Ficciones (1944), El Aleph (1949), and El Hacedor (1960). Borges died in Geneva, Switzerland in 1986.