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Revision as of 23:14, 11 January 2003 by GTBacchus (talk | contribs) (Book of Imaginary Beings)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentinian writer (Buenos Aires August 24, 1899 - Geneva June 14, 1986), mainly known for his short stories, he also wrote poetry and a considerable amount of literary criticism. Some consider him one of the founders of the Latin-American school of Magic Realism. He is considered, together with Gabriel Garcia Marquez, another Magic Realist, to be one of the foremost South American writers of fiction of the 20th century.
His work is profoundly learned (and occasionally deliberately misleading) and is often concerned with the nature of infinity, mirrors, labyrinths, reality and identity. His blindness, occasioned by an infection to his head when he was comparatively young, had a strong influence on his writing.
His non fiction is abundant and worthwhile, including astute film and book reviews, short biographies, longer philosophical musings on topics such as the nature of dialogue, language, and thought, and the relationships between. He also explores empirically or rationally many of the themes that are found in his fiction, such as the identity of the Argentinian people. In articles such as "The History of the Tango" and "The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights," he writes lucidly on things that surely held a place in his own life. The Book of Imaginary Beings is an thoroughly and obscurely researched modern bestiary of mythical creatures, in the preface of which Borges wrote that "there is a kind of lazy pleasure in useless and out-of-the-way erudition."
Collections
- Six Problems for Don Isidro (1942) (writing as H Bustos Domecq)
- A Universal History of Infamy (1954)
- Ficciones (1956)
- A Personal Anthology (1961)
- Dreamtigers (1964)
- Labyrinths (1964)
- Chronicles of Bustos Domecq (1967) (with Adolfo Bioy-Casares)
- Extraordinary Tales (1967) (with Adolfo Bioy-Casares)
- Doctor Brodie's Report (1970)
- The Book of Sand (1975)
- The Aleph and Other Stories 1933-1969 (1978)
- Seven Nights (1988)
- Obras Completas (1989)
- Everything and Nothing (1997)
- Collected Fictions (1998)
Short Stories
- "The Chamber of Statues" (1933)
- "The Dread Redeemer Lazarus Morell" (1933)
- "The Insulting Master of Etiquette Kotsuke no Suke" (1933)
- "The Mirror of Ink" (1933)
- "Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities" (1933)
- "Streetcorner Man" (1933)
- "Tom Castro, the Implausible Imposter" (1933)
- "The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate" (1933)
- "The Wizard Postponed" (1933)
- "The Masked Dyer, Hakim of Merv" (1934)
- "Tale of the Two Dreamers" (1934)
- "A Theologian in Death" (1934)
- "The Disinterested Killer Bill Harrigan" (1935)
- "The Library of Babel" (1941)
- "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1941)
- "The Aleph" (1945)
- "A Double for Mohammed" (1946)
- "The Generous Enemy" (1946)
- "Of Exactitude in Science" (1946)
- "Funes the Memorious" (1962)
- "The Immortal" (1962)
- "The Lottery in Babylon" (1962)
- "The Intruder" (1966)
- "Death and the Compass" (1968)
- "The Meeting" (1969)
- "Rosendo's Tale" (1969)
- "Doctor Brodie's Report" (1970)
- "The Duel" (1970)
- "The Elder Lady" (1970)
- "The End of the Duel" (1970)
- "The Gospel According to Mark" (1970)
- "Guayaquil" (1970)
- "Juan Murana" (1970)
- "The Unworthy Friend" (1970)
- "Utopia of a Tired Man" (1975) (Nebula award nominee)
- "August 25, 1983" (1982)
- "The Rose of Paracelsus" (1998)
- "Avelino Arredondo"
- "The Book of Sand"
- "The Bribe"
- "The Circular Ruins"
- "The Congress"
- "The Disk"
- "The Mirror and the Mask"
- "The Night of the Gifts"
- "Odin" (with Delia Ingenieros)
- "The Other"
- "The Sect of the Thirty"
- "There Are More Things"
- "Ulrike"
- "Undr"
- "The Zahir"