Promotional Information

Incorporates new information that has become available since Borges' death in 1986

Table of Contents

• Preface to the Revised Edition
• Preface to the 1981 Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Page References
• Chronology
• Part I. Borges's Worlds
  • 1. Buenos Aires and Beyond
  • 2. A Sort of Life, a Special Mind
  • 3. What Borges Did for Prose Fiction
• Part II. Borges's Fictions
  • 4. The Apprentice Fiction Maker
  • 5. Ficciones I: Doubles, Dreamers, and Detectives
  • 6. Ficciones II: The World within a Book
  • 7. El Aleph I: Doubles and Puzzles
  • 8. El Aleph II: Tales of Action and Violence
  • 9. El Aleph III: The Visionary Experience
• Part III. Borges's Place in Literature
  • 10. Dreamtigers and Later Works: A Tentative Summation
  • 11. Literature and Politics North and South
  • 12. Borges as Argentine Author: And Other Self-Evident (If Often Ignored) Truths Abbreviations
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index

About the Author

The author of several works of criticism and fiction, Gene H. Bell-Villada is Professor and Chair of Romance Languages at Williams College in Massachusetts.

Reviews

From reviews of the first edition: "A compulsively readable account of the life and works of our greatest ... writer of fantasy. With a keen appreciation of Borges himself and a pleasant disregard for the critical cliches, Bell-Villada tells us all we really want to know about the modern master--from pronouncing his name to understanding the stories." New York Daily News "Of the scores of Borges studies by now published in English, Bell-Villada's excellent book stands out as one of the freshest and most generally helpful... Lay readers and specialists alike will find his book a valuable and highly readable companion to Ficciones and El Aleph." --Choice