JorgeFranciscoIsidoroLuis Borges(24 August 1899 14 June 1986), known as JorgeLuis Borges(Spanish: [xorxe lwis orxes] audio (helpinfo)), was

s an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator who was born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature".[1] His most famous books, Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (El Aleph in Spanish) (1949), are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes such as dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, animals, fictional writers, philosophy, religion and God. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to both the fantasy and magical realism genres. The genre of magical realism reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the nineteenth century.[2][3][4] Critic ngel Flores, the first to use the term, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's A Universal History of Infamy (Historia universal de la infamia in Spanish) (1935).[5] Scholars have also suggested that Borges's progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination.[6] His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Cames, and Virgil. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland, where he studied at the Collge de Genve. The family travelled widely in Europe, including stays in Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind at the age of fifty five, and was unable to read from this point on, never learning braille. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first ever Prix International, sharing the award with Samuel Beckett. In 1971 he won the Jerusalem Prize. His work was translated and published widely in the United States and in Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages. Borges dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland.[7] His international fame was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by his works being available in English, by the "Latin American Boom" and by the success of Gabriel Garca Mrquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.[2]

Writer and essayist J. M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists."[8]

Contents [hide] 1 Life and career 1.1 Early life and education 1.2 Early writing career 1.3 Later career 1.4 International renown 1.5 Later personal life 2 Political opinions 2.1 Anti-Communism 2.2 Anti-Fascism 2.3 Anti-Peronism 2.4 Military junta 3 Works 3.1 Hoaxes and forgeries 3.2 Criticism of Borges' work 3.3 Sexuality 3.4 Nobel Prize omission 4 Fact, fantasy and non-linearity 4.1 Borgesian conundrum 5 Culture and Argentine literature 5.1 Martn Fierro and Argentine tradition 5.2 Argentine culture 5.3 Multicultural Influences 6 Influences 6.1 Modernism 6.2 Political influences 6.3 Mathematics 7 Notes 8 References

9 Further reading 9.1 Documentaries 10 External links