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“The Garden of Forking Paths” is in part a wartime thriller, set in World War I-era Britain. World War I lasted from August 1914 to November 1918 and involved alliances of multiple nations. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, the war ended with approximately 40 million people killed. As in Borges’s story, Imperial Germany was a major power in the war, as was Great Britain. While the German bombing and the July 29, 1916, British offensive described in the story are fictional, Borges has set them in a time and place where many key strategic battles took place.

The city of Albert was an important strategic location during the Battle of the Somme, a struggle that lasted from July through November of 1916. At that point in the war, Germany controlled the Somme, an area of northern France. The battle was an attempt on the part of Britain and France to bring about an end to the war by breaking through the German front. Because most of the French forces were sent to fight Germany farther east at the Battle of Verdun, the Battle of the Somme was primarily fought between Britain and Germany. The battle had a high casualty count and did not ultimately lead to meaningful strategic gains, leading many to question the wisdom of the plans that led to it. The meaninglessness of this loss of life is a frequent theme in literature about the period, one Borges echoes in Yu Tsun’s murder of Stephen Albert, a scholar with a deep understanding of the nature of time and reality, and Yu Tsun’s own death, a result of his need to prove himself to the detestable and racist Chief.

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