Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet, translator, critic, biographer, travel writer, novelist and scriptwriter. He was born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899. Among the foremost literary figures to have written in Spanish, Borges is best known for his enlightened short stories in which he blended fantasy and realism to address complex philosophical problems, involving such thematic motifs as time, identity and memory. His stories combine elements of fiction and the personal essay in forms that resist classification. Deeply influenced by his father's love of books, he decided to be a writer at the age of six. When he was seven years old he translated Oscar Wilde's short story "The Happy Prince."

When he returned to Buenos Aires at age 21, he was ready to be a leader of Argentina's young writers and artists. He helped develop several small Argentinean publications, including the literary magazine Prisma and the journal Proa. Borges first made his name as a poet and critic but turned his talents to fiction during the 1930s. In 1939, after a near-fatal illness, he began to write short stories in a style that was all his own. Collected in 1944 under the title Ficciones (Fictions), these stories achieved a literacy breakthrough with their magical blending of fact and fantasy with a taste of philosophy. In 1961, he received the International Publishers Prize with this collection. He then became the first author from Latin America to achieve worldwide fame. Borge's work was so daring that almost 20 more years had to pass before his genius was fully recognized.

Despite the lost of his eyesight during the 1950s, Borges served for 18 years as director of Argentina's National Library, and he went on writing, teaching and traveling the world until his death in 1986. The work he left behind will endure as a tribute to the power of the human imagination. Since then a whole generation of Latin American writers have followed in his footsteps, and his influence has spread throughout the Western world. Today no list of modern master would be complete without the name Jorge Luis Borges. 

El hecho ocurrio en el mes de febrero de 1969, al norte de Boston, en Cambridge. No lo escribi inmediatamente porque mi primer proposito fue olvidarlo, para no perder la razon. Ahora, en 1972, pienso que si lo escribo, los otros lo leeran como un cuento y, con los anos, lo sera tal vez para mi.

Se que fue casi atroz mientras duro y mas aun durante las desveladas noches que lo siguieron. Ello no significa que su relato pueda conmover a un tercero.

The passage above is the beginning of Jorge Luis Borges', Libro de Arena. In this book Borges returns to the fantastical themes of his early fiction. The book includes thirteen stories, the one quoted being the first of this stories. This story, "El Otro," ("The Other") begins by informing the reader that the deed occur on February of 1969. However, the narrator at that moment only wanted to forget it, but on 1972 he had decided to write about it hoping that it would be seen by reader as a tale and hopefully it will become a tale to him also. The volume also includes, "The Congress," long story in which a world congress attempts to incorporate all humanity's views and ideologies by securing thousands of books. Realizing the arbitrary and conjectural nature of their task, the congress eventually recognizes the need to reject limited, predominating worldviews and destroy the books.

(El Libro de Arena, Jorge Luis Borges p.5)

For more information on Jorge Luis Borges check out these websites:

http://www.microserve.com/~thequail/libyrinth/borges.bio.html

http://www.microserve.com/~thequail/libyrinth/borges.html

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~eds/borges/ruins.html

http://www.microserve.com/~thequail/libyrinth/borges.works.html

http://www.microserve.net/~thequail/libyrinth/borges.links.html