The Garden of Forking Paths

The Garden of Forking Paths Summary | Detailed Summary

The story opens with an unnamed narrator reading a statement by Dr. Yu Tsun, a Chinese national and a former professor of English, confessing that he is a German spy. He is recounting the events that led to his arrest, beginning with the discovery that his contact has been killed and the knowledge that he will be next. He must find a way to deliver a message to the Germans, the location of a British artillery park that must be destroyed.

He finds Dr. Stephen Albert's name in a phone book and thinks he might be able to help, although he does not say how. Tsun races to the train, pursued by Capt. Richard Madden, an Irishman working for English intelligence, the same man who has killed his contact. Tsun sees Madden arrive too late to catch the same train, giving him almost an hour's head start. To keep his mind off the deadly chase, Tsun turns his thoughts to his grandfather, Ts'ui Pen, who devoted the last years of his life to an incomplete and incomprehensible novel and the construction of "a labyrinth in which all men would get lost." Tsun fears that he will now die before he understands his grandfather's work.

As he tries to find his way from the train station to Albert's, Tsun describes the roads as forking "among the now confused meadows," then finds himself trapped in a garden maze at the home of Albert, a noted scholar of the Chinese language and culture. A former missionary, he is an expert in the works of Ts'ui Pen. Albert lets Tsun in, and after introductions, tells him that he has solved the riddle of his grandfather's novel and labyrinth, that they are the same. As he explains it, "In the work of Ts'ui Pen, all possible outcomes occur; each one is the point of departure for other forkings. Sometimes, the paths of this labyrinth converge: for example, you arrive at this house, but in one of the possible paths you are my enemy, in another, my friend."

Albert leaves only the theme of the labyrinth for Tsun to decipher, leading him in a philosophical discussion until he realizes that the novel, which is the labyrinth, cannot contain its own name. The word he finds missing is "time." In addition, time is running out for Tsun. He has the answers he sought and a perfect plan to execute. He shoots Albert. The following day when the story is published in the papers, the headline gives the Germans the information they need and they bomb the artillery park in Albert, Belgium.