Borges' last detective story and what was in the labyrinth

Abstract

This essay makes two different, though related claims. On the one hand, it suggests that Borges' detective story"Ibn Hakkan Al-Bokhari, Dead in his Labyrinth" was written in such a way that the role of the detective has to be played by the reader. This is a model Borges himself had proposed in"Examination of the Works of Herbert Quain." I claim that the solution at the end of the story is only provisional, and I propose a possible alternative solution. On the other hand, I place this story within the broader frame of Borges' narrative poetics and conception of the reader. I advance the idea that this poetics should be seen as the invention of a new reader, one that arises from the combination of two strong, and in many ways opposed, reading models: those provided by the sacred text and by detective fiction. I claim that this unprecedented combination is one of Borges' main contributions to the renewal of the short story as a literary genre, and that its virtuosic execution in this story leads us to reconsider it as a major piece in the body of Borges' narrative.