Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo (/ˈbɔːrhɛs/ BOR-hess;[2] Spanish: [ˈxoɾxe ˈlwis ˈboɾxes] ⓘ; 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature.

His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude.

In Spain, Borges became a member of the avant-garde, anti-Modernismo Ultraist literary movement, inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, close to the Imagists.

His first collection of short stories, El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan (The Garden of Forking Paths), appeared in 1941, composed mostly of works previously published in Sur.

[11] The title story concerns a Chinese professor in England, Dr. Yu Tsun, who spies for Germany during World War I, in an attempt to prove to the authorities that an Asian person is able to obtain the information that they seek.

[23][24] Composed of stories taking up over sixty pages, the book was generally well received, but El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan failed to garner for him the literary prizes many in his circle expected.

While Beckett had garnered a distinguished reputation in Europe and America, Borges had been largely unknown and untranslated in the English-speaking world and the prize stirred great interest in his work.

Numerous honors were to accumulate over the years such as a Special Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America "for distinguished contribution to the mystery genre" (1976),[40] the Balzan Prize (for Philology, Linguistics and literary Criticism) and the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca, the Miguel de Cervantes Prize (all 1980), as well as the French Legion of Honour (1983) and the Diamond Konex Award for Literature Arts as the most important writer in the last decade in his country.

[41][42][43] Di Giovanni contended that Borges's popularity was due to his writing with multiple languages in mind and deliberately using Latin words as a bridge from Spanish to English.

[75] In a 1956 interview given to El Hogar, Borges stated that "[Communists] are in favor of totalitarian regimes and systematically combat freedom of thought, oblivious of the fact that the principal victims of dictatorships are, precisely, intelligence and culture.

There are even agencies of the State that supply them with opinions, passwords, slogans, and even idols to exalt or cast down according to the prevailing wind or in keeping with the directives of the thinking heads of the single party.

"[78] In the same interview, Borges also criticized famed poet and playwright Federico García Lorca, who was abducted by Nationalist soldiers and executed without trial during the Spanish Civil War.

"[83]In 1946, Borges published the short story "Deutsches Requiem", which masquerades as the last testament of a condemned Nazi war criminal named Otto Dietrich zur Linde.

During this period, Borges was informed that he was being "promoted" from his position at the Miguel Cané Library to a post as inspector of poultry and rabbits at the Buenos Aires municipal market.

Bellboys babbling orders, portraits of caudillos, prearranged cheers or insults, walls covered with names, unanimous ceremonies, mere discipline usurping the place of clear thinking ... Fighting these sad monotonies is one of the duties of a writer.

SADE official Luisa Mercedes Levinson noted, "We would gather every week to tell the latest jokes about the ruling couple and even dared to sing the songs of the French Resistance, as well as 'La Marseillaise'".

[92] According to Edwin Williamson, Borges had agreed to stand for the presidency of the SADE in order [to] fight for intellectual freedom, but he also wanted to avenge the humiliation he believed he had suffered in 1946, when the Peronists had proposed to make him an inspector of chickens.

That tiny group of writers leading a foreign guest through a dark building by the light of guttering candles was vivid proof of the extent to which the SADE had been diminished under the rule of Juan Perón.

He argued that, despite their claims to detest capitalism, Juan and Eva Perón "copied its methods, dictating names and slogans to the people" in the same way that multi-national corporations "impose their razor blades, cigarettes, and washing machines."

Coleridge spoke of the "willing suspension of disbelief," that is, poetic faith; Samuel Johnson said, in defense of Shakespeare, that the spectators at a tragedy do not believe they are in Alexandria in the first act and Rome in the second but submit to the pleasure of a fiction.

He also translated (while simultaneously subtly transforming) the works of, among others, Ambrose Bierce, William Faulkner, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

Borge’s recorded work includes readings of his poems, a collaboration with Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla, and a series of lectures on a characteristically wide range of topics, from Buddhism to the nature of poetry.

“Unoriginal Opinions of an Original Man: Jorge Luis Borges’s Views on Race and Brazilian People in His Conversations with Adolfo Bioy Casares and His Literary Works.” Latin American research review 56.3 (2021): 668–678.

In the post-Peronist Argentina of the early 1960s, Contorno met with wide approval from the youth who challenged the authenticity of older writers such as Borges and questioned their legacy of experimentation.

"[125] Some observers speculated that Borges did not receive the award in his later life because of his conservative political views, or more specifically because he had accepted an honour from Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

[136] The character Fierro is illegally drafted to serve at a border fort to defend it against the indigenous population but ultimately deserts to become a gaucho matrero, the Argentine equivalent of a North American western outlaw.

[136][139] Borges points out that Hernández evidently knew the difference between actual gaucho tradition of composing poetry versus the "gauchesque" fashion among Buenos Aires literati.

[142][143][144] Spurred by pride in his family's heritage, Borges often used those civil wars as settings in fiction and quasi-fiction (for example, "The Life of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz", "The Dead Man", "Avelino Arredondo") as well as poetry ("General Quiroga Rides to His Death in a Carriage").

As Borges matured, he traveled through Argentina as a lecturer and, internationally, as a visiting professor; he continued to tour the world as he grew older, finally settling in Geneva, where he had spent some of his youth.

[152] Portraits of diverse coexisting cultures characteristic of Argentina are especially pronounced in the book Six Problems for don Isidoro Parodi (co-authored with Bioy Casares) and Death and the Compass.