50 Fun Facts About Jorge Luis Borges

Borges was a short-story writer, poet and essayist from which country?

He was born in Palermo, then a poor district of Buenos Aires, in 1899.

Which 1944 collection became Borges's most famous book and made him known worldwide?

It grew out of the 1941 volume The Garden of Forking Paths plus a second section called Artifices.

Borges shared the first International Formentor Prize in 1961 with which writer?

The prize brought Borges, then largely untranslated in English, sudden international attention.

Which condition had fully overtaken Borges by the age of 55?

His father had also lost his sight, and Borges never learned to read Braille.

In 1955 Borges was appointed director of which Argentine institution?

He got the job from the provisional government that had just toppled Perón.

Borges died of liver cancer in 1986 in which city?

He had studied there as a teenager and dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city.

In "The Library of Babel", every book in the library has how many pages?

The narrator's universe is an endless expanse of hexagonal rooms lined with bookshelves.

Which Borges story features a point in space that contains all other points?

The narrator finds it in the cellar of a mediocre poet named Carlos Argentino Daneri.

Ireneo Funes, in "Funes the Memorious", is cursed with the inability to do what?

He can reconstruct an entire past day, though doing so takes him another full day.

Which 1941 Borges story is said to foreshadow the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics?

Hugh Everett's relative-state thesis, the basis of many-worlds, did not appear until 1957.

Borges wrote parody detective stories as "H. Bustos Domecq" with which collaborator?

The pair met at Victoria Ocampo's villa in 1932 and also ran a detective-fiction imprint together.

Which honour was Borges nominated for more than thirty times without ever winning?

He joked that not giving it to him had become a Scandinavian tradition.

At age ten, Borges translated which Oscar Wilde story into Spanish?

Friends assumed the real translator was his father, a lawyer with literary ambitions.

Borges's longest work of fiction, "The Congress", runs to roughly how many pages?

He never wrote a novel, calling it a genre that requires padding.

In "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", Uqbar is first sought in what kind of reference work?

The entry turns up only in one odd reprint of the Anglo-American Cyclopaedia.

In "Death and the Compass", who is detective Erik Lönnrot's criminal nemesis?

Lönnrot follows what looks like a kabbalistic pattern straight into a trap.

In "The Circular Ruins", a man arrives at a burned temple intending to do what?

He learns at the end that he too is being dreamed by someone else.

Borges's story "Emma Zunz" was filmed in 1954 under which title?

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson directed the adaptation, whose title means Days of Hate.

Borges recorded the 1965 album El Tango with which Argentine composer?

His recorded output also includes lectures on Buddhism, the Kabbalah and the Divine Comedy.

Under which president was Borges "promoted" to inspector of poultry and rabbits?

Told it was because he had sided with the Allies, Borges resigned the next day.

What was the title of Borges's first poetry collection, published in 1923?

Later in life he tried to buy up copies of some early publications to destroy them.

Borges's sister Norah made her name in which art?

Their father, who grew up speaking English at home, wrote a novel called El caudillo.

Borges delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures in 1967-68 at which university?

The talks were later published as This Craft of Verse.

From 1967 Borges spent five years collaborating with which American translator?

Di Giovanni argued Borges's English success came from writing with several languages in mind.

Who became Borges's widow and the heir to his estate?

She was of Japanese and German ancestry and had met him at a lecture on Icelandic literature.

Borges's 1986 marriage was conducted by attorney in which country?

The workaround was common for Argentines sidestepping their country's divorce laws.

In Spain, the young Borges joined which avant-garde literary movement?

His first poem, "Hymn to the Sea", was written in the style of Walt Whitman.

Borges co-founded which broadsheet journal, distributed by pasting copies on walls?

He also co-founded Proa and contributed to the avant-garde review Martín Fierro.

Which William Faulkner novel did Borges translate into Spanish in 1940?

His choice of a lesser Faulkner novel was probably driven by opportunity and the need for money.

In what year did Borges receive a British honorary knighthood?

The French Legion of Honour followed in 1983.

In "The Book of Sand", the narrator acquires the infinite book from a seller of what?

The tall Scot says he bought it in India; its title page reads "Holy Writ" and "Bombay".

In "The Book of Sand", the narrator hides the book behind his copy of which work?

He eventually abandons it in a library basement, reasoning that the best place to hide a leaf is a forest.

In a 1939 story, Pierre Menard sets out to re-create which novel word for word?

The narrator argues Menard's identical text is richer because it must be read against the 20th century.

"Funes the Memorious" is set in which town in Uruguay?

The narrator, a version of Borges, meets the boy there in 1884.

What accident gives Funes his perfect memory?

Afterwards he greets the narrator by reciting Pliny's Natural History in perfect Latin.

In "The Immortal", Roman soldier Marcus Flaminius Rufus serves under which emperor?

A dying stranger tells him of a river whose waters grant immortality.

In "The Immortal", the Troglodyte whom Rufus names Argos turns out to be which poet?

Rufus had named him after the dog of Odysseus and tried to teach him language.

Which critic named "Death and the Compass" his favourite Borges story?

He also numbers Borges among the key figures of the Western canon.

In "The Lottery in Babylon", the all-encompassing lottery is run by what entity?

Some whisper that the organisation has never existed and never will.

Borges cited "The Crystal Egg" and "The Door in the Wall" as inspirations; who wrote them?

The stories shaped his tale of a tiny sphere in a cellar that shows the whole universe at once.

Who co-wrote the Book of Imaginary Beings with Borges?

It first appeared in 1957 as Manual de zoología fantástica, a handbook of fantastic zoology.

Which creature in the Book of Imaginary Beings did Borges invent outright?

He also fabricated sources and quotations that translator Andrew Hurley calls put-ons.

Which 1946 Borges story poses as the last testament of a condemned Nazi war criminal?

Borges said he set out to imagine "the ideal Nazi" after meeting Argentine sympathisers.

Borges's 1934 essay "Yo, Judío" answered ultra-nationalists who claimed he was what?

He replied he would be proud to be Jewish and that any pure Castilian likely had Jewish ancestry.

Where did the first English translation of a Borges story appear, in 1948?

Anthony Boucher translated it; wide English fame still waited until the early 1960s.

The people of Tlön hold an extreme form of which philosophical position?

One of their languages has no nouns, only impersonal verbs with adverbial affixes.

Who wrote the preface to Labyrinths, the 1962 English collection of Borges?

The book gathered 13 stories from Ficciones and ten from The Aleph, plus essays and parables.

Which sport did Borges famously detest?

Ironically his fiction is full of knife fighters, gauchos and street toughs.

Which Nobel committee member wrote in 1979 that Borges's politics made him an improper laureate?

The objection followed Borges's acceptance of an honour from Chile's Augusto Pinochet.

Borges's 1985 poem about two soldiers killed in the Falklands War is titled what?

He called the war a fight between two bald men over a comb.