classes of India. He flees to a tower where he meets a robber of Parsee corpses collecting gold teeth. He then begins a journey across the subcontinent (the geography of which Borges describes in detail), interacting with untouchables along the way. He meets a man who, though destitute, is happy and spiritual. The student encounters many such people radiating a small amount of this spiritual clarity. From these experiences, he infers the existence of a perfect man, whom he calls Al-Mu'tasim. (Al-Mu'tasim means "he who goes in quest of aid" or "the seeker of shelter".) This perfect man is a higher spiritual being, the source and originator of this pure spiritual clarity. Obsessed with meeting Al-Mu'tasim, the student goes on a pilgrimage through Hindustan to find him. He eventually hears the voice of the Al-Mu'tasim resounding from a hut. He pulls back the curtain and goes in. The book ends at this point. The reviewer then gives his criticisms of the work. A long footnote at the end of the review summarises The Conference of the Birds (1177) by Farid ud-Din Attar, in which a group of birds seek a feather dropped in the middle of China by Simurgh, the bird king. Thirty birds reach the mountain of Simurgh and there they find through contemplation that they themselves are the Simurgh. (Si murgh means "thirty birds".) Style Borges's mixing of the fictional and the real, which Jaime Alazraki calls a "Borgesian device," both imparts a real feeling to the fictional, and an unreal feeling to the real. Also, the use of a summary within a summary, and the taking of those summaries and stripping them down to expose the same principle "are a form of expressing in the structure of the story the pantheistic idea that anything is all things." Naomi Lindstrom describes the reviewer of the detective story as "a typical Borges narrator". At times he demonstrates great knowledge of detailed information, but at other times he cannot grasp the most basic concepts. His narrative is uncertain and inconstant. His confusion serves to emphasize the incomprehension of the main character of the fictitious book as he goes on his pilgrimage. Borges's use of an allegory to shed light on a detective story shows his use of religious doctrines for aesthetic value. Reception In his autobiographical essay, Borges writes that when "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" was first published, the people