Borges / I am not sure that I exist

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

1899-1986

"I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors."

Birthplace

Buenos Aires, Argentina

Education

Taught at home, by his parents; attended school in Geneva.

Other jobs

Librarian (fittingly enough), academic

Did you know?

He honed his literary skills writing yoghurt adverts.

Critical verdict

Borges became a myth in his own lifetime for his mythic riddlings, but never, to the fury of his followers, received the ultimate prize - "Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me."

Recommended works

Labyrinths, a collection of some of his most dazzling stories, is an excellent starting point; a new Collected Works appeared in 1999.

Influences

His great loves included Verlaine, Rimbaud, Mallarm¿Schopenhauer and Walt Whitman.

Now read on

Italo Calvino, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie

Adaptations

Several of his short stories have been filmed; the most recent, and well-received, is Death and the Compass (1996), dir. Alex (Repo Man) Cox.

Recommended biography

James Woodall's Borges: A Life is a well-researched guide to the man and his work, and provides political background.

THE GUARDIAN