"I asked him the source of that memorable sentence, and he replied that it was recorded in the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia, in its article on Uqbar. It so happend that the villa (which we had rented furnished) possessed a copy of that work. In the final pages of volume XLVI, we ran across an article on Upsala; in the beginning of volume XLVII, we found one on Ural-Altaic languages; but not one word on Uqbar. A little put out, Bioy consulted the index volumes. In vain he tried every possible spelling – Ukbar, Ucbar, Ooqbar, Ookbar, Oukbahr ... Before leaving, he informed me it was a region in either Iraq or Asia Minor. I must say that I acknowledged this a little uneasily. I supposed that this undocumented country and its anonymous heresiarch had been deliberately invented by Bioy out of modesty, to substantiate a phrase. A futile examination of one of the atlases of Justus Perthes strengthened my doubt. On the following day, Bioy telephoned me from Buenos Aires. He told me that he had in front of him the article on Uqbar, in volume XLVI of the encyclopedia."
Jorge Luis Borges "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius"
This volume belongs also to the subgroup of the three terms, that make up the title of Borges’ tale. It makes use of prints from earlier volumes of the Tlön encyclopedia. These left-over sheets are overprinted with polymer-plates, which as well have been used already for the encyclopedia. The ideas and intentions contained in the originals are condensed or intensified into single aspects. In Borges’ text the description of the unknown land Uqbar is only to find in one copy of a certain encyclopedia. Our volume tries to explain the term Uqbar with material from former volumes. Design and letterpress: Ines von Ketelhodt and Peter Malutzki. 128 pages, printed paperboard. Flörsheim am Main 2005.
