Whether he was writing fiction, essays, or poetry, there were certain themes and subjects that Borges returned to time and again. His home town became a favourite topic--in his first collection, Fervor de Buenos Aires, he wrote: "My soul is in the streets / of Buenos Aires," a sentiment that remained constant throughout his life. This collection reveals other preoccupations as well--with history in all its permutations, Borges's own ancestry, and his fascination with metaphysics, mazes, mirror images, and the blurry line between parallel realities:

The celibate white cat surveys himself in the mirror's clear-eyed glass, not suspecting that the whiteness facing him and those gold eyes that he's not seen before in ramblings through the house are his own likeness. Who is to tell him the cat observing him is only the mirror's way of dreaming?