Jorge Luis Borges

"No one realized that the book and the labyrinth were one and the same"

One of the most widely acclaimed writers of the 20th century, won many prizes, nominated for but never won the Nobel prize in literature, which was widely considered an outrage.

The reason he didn't win it was he didn't frankly oppose Peron's dictatorship. Well, that's a political concern melting with literature... -- OlivierRey

Argentinian writer, born in Buenos Aires in 1899, died in Geneva June 1986. Wrote esoteric and fantastical stories about infinite involutions and infinities. All quite short stories, which got shorter as he stripped out the plot for the parable. Made his living as Librarian of the National Library of Argentina.

Our favorite stories include:

• Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
• Funes the Memorious
• The Book of Sand
• The Immortal
• The Lie
• Dante and the Tiger
• The Garden of the Forking Paths
• TheLibraryOfBabel

Also see:

• http://www.hum.aau.dk/Institut/rom/borges/borges.htm
• http://www.themodernword.com/borges/
• BorgesClassificationOfAnimals for quotation about classification of animals

The truth is in there somewhere

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If you like JorgeLuisBorges, you may like ItaloCalvino. His short story "The Distance of the Moon" is wonderful.

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Both authors - great, also GabrielGarciaMarquez. Calvino's book of Italian Folk tales is wonderful - I used to read it to my kids and they loved it. Beats the pants off Hans Christian... -- DaveEveritt

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Borges was obsessed by representation of real things in words. In a sense, this is normal that author pleases the IT people's mind because programming and writing can generate similar ThinkingPattern?s. All that is about representing things or in words or in code. The only thing is that when you represent things in words, it is so close to the ways the mind thinks that it can become easily esoteric! -- OlivierRey

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