“Through the years, a man peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, tools, stars, horses and people. Shortly before his death, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the image of his own face.” These words, inseparably marrying Jorge Luis Borges's life and work, encapsulate how he interwove the two throughout his legendary career. But the Borges of popular imagination is the blind, lauded librarian and man of letters; few biographers have explored his tumultuous early life in the streets and cafes of Buenos Aires, a young man searching for his path in the world.
He read and wrote with the greatest of passions. And Jorge Luis Borges, the greatest of Argentine writers, created, through a 60-year-long career, one of the most significant and enduring literary legacies of any writer of the 20th century. The reach of his poetry, his stories, and his essays was global. His works came to be read throughout the world, even prior to becoming an elderly statesman-like writer. The result was a legacy of written art that often defies categorization, or even accurate description.
