The Fragility of Facts

How Borges’ 1940 story foresaw our post-truth era

While conversing with friends, a man mentions an entry from an encyclopedia — only to discover that the text, describing the mysterious Middle Eastern region of Uqbar, is absent from all other copies of the same edition.

This is the beginning of Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, a story by Jorge Luis Borges — and the most chilling piece of literature I have ever read.

This was also the beginning of something personal for me. The moment I encountered this story, thirty-two years ago in a small bookshop, ignited my passion for Borges’ writings. I remember pulling the book from the shelf and becoming so engrossed that I couldn’t put it down, sitting on the floor between two aisles, reading until the last page.

A young man reading a book, generated by Ideogram.com with a prompt by Fabio Turel

Last but not least, this moment also initiated a shift in the way I understand the forces that shape our reality.

In Borges’ story, what starts as an anomalous encyclopedia entry expands into something far more sinister: Tlön, an entirely fabricated reality created by a secret society of intellectuals. As knowledge of Tlön spreads, its principles begin to override actual reality — not through force, but through willing adoption by people who find its ordered fictions more appealing than messy truth.