Borges: A Life

Details: Product Description
Edwin Williamson's major new biography is the first in any language 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. Williamson's definitive biography finally unlocks the mysteries that still surround hte life of Borges, resulting in a compelling and poignant portrait that will radically transform established views of this modern master.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Jorge Luis Borges is one of the giants of twentieth-century literature, an Argentine writer of singular vision and talent profoundly inspired by mythology, metaphysics, detective stories, and the deepest, most contrary emotions aroused by family, country, and love. Borges greatly enhanced the philosophical and aesthetic dimensions of fiction in his provocative story-essay hybrids, entwined personal passions with political convictions in his poetry, and made of his life a quest to understand the parameters and significance of the self within the mysterious, labyrinthine universe. The withdrawn, myopic, and bookish son of a literary half-English father and a fiercely class-conscious mother, Borges began writing early on, but neither fame nor happiness found him until his later years, after he lost his sight. Williamson is the first to chronicle in full Borges' tumultuous private life, and, therefore, the first to draw crucial connections between his haunting imagery, momentous themes, and indelible voice and his smothering familial relationships, disastrous love affairs, and valiant opposition to tyranny, especially that of the Peron regime. The result is a richly psychological, dynamically intellectual, and deeply affecting portrait of an often anguished and inhibited man who, through heroic perseverance and spiritual conviction, found salvation in writing and transformed literature for all time.
Donna Seaman

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Review
"Its evocations of the soul of a place.... Approaches, In Its Way, The Somber Magic of Joyce's Dubliners."
About the Author
Edwin Williamson is the author of the Penguin History of Latin America and other books on both Latin America and the Golden Age of Spain. He is the King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish in the University of Oxford, and Fellow of Exeter College.

EAN: 9780670885794

Package Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.9 inches

Languages: English