1949. It was translated into English by James Irby and Donald Yates in their 1962 collection Labyrinths, and by Di Giovanni (in collaboration with Borges) in 1970. Style Narration "The House of Asterion" has been presented as an example of using an "unnatural narrator", for its use of an unconventional, nonhuman narrator. The bulk of the story consists of Asterion's inner monologue, which limits the reader's vision to Asterion's view of the world. This narrative technique was frequently employed by Borges, including in the short stories "Man on Pink Corner" and "The Form of the Sword". The presentation of the well-known myth from Asterion's perspective also serves to humanize him, casting him as more of an eccentric, sympathetic character than a monstrous one. Literary critic Gene H. Bell-Villada wrote that "prior to Borges's little fable, there is no instance of a major author so inverting the hero–monster relationship". Several analyses have noted the apparent presence of an unnamed third-person editor who briefly clarifies Asterion's language throughout the story. In a footnote, the editor admits to replacing Asterion's use of the numeral "fourteen" with the word "infinite" after inferring this to be Asterion's original intent. The filtering of Asterion's words through this anonymous editor, who is also privy to Theseus's comments to Ariadne after he kills Asterion, contributes to the story's tension. Structure One of Borges's shortest stories, "The House of Asterion" has been described as an "assemblage of clues" and a "literary puzzle" whose solution is gradually hinted at but not fully revealed until the end. Its structure is thus similar to a labyrinth—the story's setting and an object of Borges's lifelong fascination—that the reader must "penetrate to the identity of the prisoner and thus to the meaning of the story". The story's epigraph, directly quoted from Apollodorus's Bibliotheca, intimates the narrator's identity at the onset, but only for readers already acquainted with the Minotaur's lesser-known name. Further hints are provided in the descriptions of Asterion's labyrinth-like environment with no furnishings, the surrounding sea, and Asterion's declaration that he is the son of a queen (i.e., Pasiphaë). As the story progresses, the reader is "caught in the Cretan labyrinth along with the Minotaur and Theseus". Literary critic Roberto González Echevarría noted that Borges employed the technique of defamiliarization, first described by the Russian formalists, in adding an unexpected twist to a well-known myth. By first setting the reader up to