SF authors born 1894-1903: 1899

1. Jorge Luis Borges
2. Laurence Manning

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Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986)

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges was an Argentine writer born on 24 August 1899 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was brought-up bilingual in Spanish and English. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, then traveled around Spain. On return in 1921, he began his career as a writer with the publication of poems and essays in Surrealism literary journals. He worked as a librarian, spending most of his time at work writing articles and short stories. He suffered political persecution at the hands of the Peron administration and became a public lecturer.

Due to a hereditary condition Borges became blind in his early fifties. In 1955 he was appointed director of the National Public Library (Biblioteca Nacional) and professor of Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In 1961 he came to international attention when he received the first International Publishers' Prize Prix Formentor, his work was published in the US and in Europe. He died in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1986.

Ficciones (London and New York, 1962, in translation). It is the most popular anthology of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges, and is considered by many to be the best introduction to his work. Seventeen stories with "parallel paths in time" theme.

Ficciones should not be confused with Labyrinths, though they have much in common. Labyrinths is a separate translation of Borges material, by James E. Irby, that also appeared in 1962. Together, these two translations led to much of Borges's worldwide fame in the 60s. Several stories appear in both volumes.

* "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" (1940)
* "The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim" (1936, not included in the 1941 edition)
* "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (1939)
* "The Circular Ruins" (1940)
* "The Babylon Lottery" (1941)
* "An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain" (1941)
* "The Library of Babel" (1941)
* The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941)
Etc.


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Laurence Manning (TK)

TK