The Book of Sand (Spanish: El libro de arena) is a 1975 short story collection by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges.

Referring to the collection, Borges said: I have wanted to be loyal, in these exercises of a blind man, to the example of Wells: the conjunction of a plain style, sometimes almost oral, and an impossible argument.

[3]The first edition, published in Buenos Aires by Emecé, contained 181 pages.

Regarding this, Borges begins The Book of Sand's epilogue by saying: "To prologue unread stories is an almost impossible work, as it demands the analysis of plots one should not anticipate.

"[4] The book contains thirteen short stories (original titles in italics):[5] Among this collection are: The Other, the first story of the collection, in which the protagonist (Borges himself) encounters a younger version of himself (similar to his later short story August 25, 1983), The Congress, on an utopic universal congress (seen by critics as a political essay), There Are More Things, written in memory of H. P. Lovecraft, on an encounter with a monstrous extraterrestrial inhabiting an equally monstrous house,[6] Undr, on the maximum poetic synthesis,[7] The Sect of the Thirty, on an ancient manuscript that tells of the characteristics of a sect that equally venerated Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot,[8] A Weary Man's Utopia (according to Borges, "the most honest and melancholic piece in the collection"),[4] The Disk, on a one-sided coin, and the titular work The Book of Sand, on a book with infinite pages.