The Garden of Forking Paths by Jorge Luis Borges. Short summary

5 seconds

A German spy needs to report information about the location of British artillery. He kills a man named Steven Alber, and gets into the papers. The city of Albert is bombed.

1 minute

Yu Tsung, a German agent in England, must pass on information about the location of the British artillery. His colleague has already been arrested and has to leave. In the handbook, the Chinaman finds a man who can pass on this information. He goes to see Dr. Stephen Alber.

A man with a lantern opens the gate and offers his guest a tour of the garden of diverging paths, the Qiu Peng Labyrinth. The Chinese philosopher was left with a pile of drafts. Published, they seemed to make no sense. Albert is sure that the philosopher’s tangled novel is a labyrinth with forks in time. The same person could be a friend or an enemy.

The hero of Qu Peng’s novel chooses all the possible outcomes of the situation, which, in turn, evolve and intertwine. Yu Tsung kills the doctor. The newspapers report on the mysterious murder of the Chinaman Stephen Albert. Yu Tsung is sentenced, but he manages to send information. The agent had to report the name of Albert’s town, and he kills the man with that name. The chief solved his riddle.