Biography

Borges was born into a genteel upper-middle-class family in Buenos Aires. Two early influences were his grandmother, who was English (Borges learned to read English before Spanish), and his father's library. Although Borges spent several years in Geneva before 1918, followed by a period in Spain where he first encountered a literary vanguard known as Ultraism, it was not until his return to Argentina in 1921 that his career really began. He used the pages of several "little magazines" to promulgate the tenets of Ultraism which comprised the initial foundation for his writing.

His first book, Fervor de Buenos Aires, appeared in 1923. He continued to write prolifically, producing more poetry, essays examining a wide variety of topics, and the incomparable short stories for which he became especially well known. Commencing with themes of local interest, Borges turned rapidly to matters of universal culture, utilizing paradox, ambiguity, and skepticism to illustrate his lines of thought. Toward the end of his life he returned, if somewhat less obviously, to subjects more specifically Argentinean. Along the way, he managed to create what was to become one of the great contributions to Latin American literary tradition, "magic realism." During his life Borges fought unsuccessfully against blindness, which came to him in middle age, just at the time he was named Director of the National Library of Argentina. Eventually he returned to Geneva shortly before his death in 1986.