Nian Liu

Death and the Compass

In “Death and the Compass”, Borges presciently anticipates developments in contemporary physics and scientific thought, constructing a literary environment that systemically gives the lie to the dream of rational determinism, suggesting instead something like a disorder from shifting from one religion to another. Death and the Compass was hard to follow because I would have to do a lot of back tracking to the highlights to the specific dates that happened prior to the murders. I wasn’t really into detective stories so I had a very confusing time reading Death and the Compass because when I read I don’t really like testing my memory to sort out the final clue to what really happened in the end and why.