Edwin Williamson, Borges

He was the blind man who lived in a library. That fact alone is worth a biography, never mind that Jorge Luis Borges is easily among the top ten most important writers of the last century. His short stories – no novels, alas – were masterpieces of breathtaking and abstruse complexity; some say his repeated metaphoric use of the library and the labyrinth anticipated the Internet by decades. (It also earned him a starring role as the villain in Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.) But he’s never been the recipient of a thorough biography, until now. This painstakingly researched work by Spanish-language lit scholar Williamson is worthy of Borges’s talent, offering a detailed and sympathetic look at his difficult relationship with Argentine politics, his troubled family, and, of course, his writing.