Borges

Jorge Borges' stories often put the characters in critical situations so intense they affect even the reader. In "Garden of Forking Paths", Yu Tsun is trying to act as a spy for Germany during WWI and send a coded message to let the Germans know where to bomb. Tsun grows desperate. He is on the run from an Irish special agent and is running out of options. He decides to kill one Stephen Albert, whose last name is also the name of the village to be bombed. The unsuspecting Albert has a secret connection with his soon-to-be killer; Albert solved the mystery of an unfinished book of Tsun's Ancestors, Ts'ui Pên. Ts'ui Pên began a book and constructed a maze that all men would get lost in. Albert realized that the maze and the book were the same and represented multiple realities in time. Albert's discovery escalates the action of the story. Here is a spy out to kill a man who has solved the greatest intellectual achievement of the spy's family tree., all the while the pursuits of the Irishman never let up. The reader knowing all of this, and learning all the possibilities before Tsun assassinates Albert is enough to put even an experienced reader on edge