Edwin Williamson on Jorge Luis Borges

October 17, 2014

7:00 p.m.

Americas Society

680 Park Avenue

New York

Jorge Luis Borges. (Image: Grete Stern/Wikimedia Commons)

Overview

Online registration for tonight’s program is closed. Members may arrive prior to the event and pick up their tickets, and non-members may pay at the door. Email jnegroni@as-coa.org for questions.

Admission: FREE for AS and YPA Members, $10 for non-members.

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Internationally-renowned scholar Edwin Williamson, King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies at Oxford University, will deliver a lecture on the Argentine author of Ficciones (1944) and of numerous other classics: "Borges and the Muse (with Some Thoughts on Literary Biography)." Williamson's publications include The Penguin History of Latin America (2009), Borges: A Life (2004) and, as editor, The Cambridge Companion to Jorge Luis Borges (2013). A book signing will follow the lecture.

Edwin Williamson's Borges: A Life is the first biography to encompass the entire span of Jorge Luis Borges's life and work. Drawing upon previously unknown or unavailable sources, it brings out the human side of Borges: his roots in Argentina, the evolution of his political ideas, his relations with family and friends; the conflicts, desires, and obsessions that drove the man and shaped his work. The result is a compelling and poignant portrait that radically transforms established views of this modern master.

"[Borges] has lifted fiction away from the flat earth where most of our novels and short stories still take place." –John Updike

"An absorbing and meticulously researched biography by one of the best critics of Latin American literature." –Mario Vargas Llosa

"Astonishingly vivid and original. Takes the reader far beyond any previous point in understanding the life of the Argentine master and the complex relation of the work to the life." –Harold Bloom

"The best biography of Borges in any language." –Roberto Gonzalez Echeverria

Watch a video of Jorge Luis Borges:

We thank the following additional institutions for helping publicize this event: Columbia University; the Consulate General of Argentina in New York; the Hispanic New York Project; Hunter College, CUNY; InterAmericas®; The International Literary Quarterly; McNally Jackson Books; New York University; The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church; the 92Y Unterberg Poetry Center; University of Houston; and Words Without Borders. This program will be held in English. Event Information: Jose Negroni | <a href="mailto:jnegroni@as-coa.org">jnegroni@as-coa.org</a> | 1-212-277-8353 Press Inquiries: Adriana La Rotta | <a href="mailto:alarotta@as-coa.org">alarotta@as-coa.org</a> | 1-212-277-8384 <hr /> Jorge Luis Borges (b. 1899, Buenos Aires; d. Geneva, 1986), universally considered one of the world’s greatest twentieth-century writers, distinguished himself as a poet, short-story writer, and essayist. Among Borges’s numerous publications are Historia universal de la infamia (1935), Ficciones (1944), and El Aleph (1949). Stories such as “The Aleph,” “The Garden of Forking Paths,” “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” and “The Library of Babel” are considered literary classics. Borges received many literary prizes throughout his career, including the Prix International and the Jerusalem Prize and honorary degrees from Columbia University and Oxford University. Borges’s vast oeuvre has been widely translated. He, in turn, translated the work of numerous authors including Kafka, Poe, Whitman, and Virginia Woolf.

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Edwin Williamson on Jorge Luis Borges

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