"Believe me: the benefits of blindness have been greatly exaggerated. If I could see, I would never leave the house, I'd stay indoors reading the many books that surround me."
--Jorge Luis Borges Days before his death, Borges gave an intimate interview to his friend, the Argentine journalist Gloria Lopez Lecube. That interview is translated for the first time here, giving English-language readers a new insight into his life, loves, and thoughts about his work and country at the end of his life. Accompanying that interview are a selection of the fascinating interviews he gave throughout his career. Highlights include his celebrated conversations with Richard Burgin during Borges's time as a lecturer at Harvard University, in which he gives rich new insights into his own works and the literature of others, as well as discussing his now oft-overlooked political views. The pieces combine to give a new and revealing window on one of the most celebrated cultural figures of the past century.
Jorge Luis Borges (b. 1899, Buenos Aires, Argentina; d. 1986, Geneva, Switzerland) was an Argentine short-story writer, poet, essayist and translator. He was one of the greatest literary figures of the twentieth century, inspiring generations of writers in the US and UK as well as his native Latin America. He is most famous for the short-story collections Ficciones (1944) and The Aleph (1949).