Q 01/05

Borges's 1949 collection The Aleph is named after the first letter of which alphabet?

A) Greek

B) Hebrew

C) Sanskrit

D) Cyrillic

Answer · why

B) Hebrew

Hebrew: aleph is its first letter, thought to have begun as a drawing of an ox's head, and the Greeks borrowed the same sign as their alpha.

Q 02/05

Which 1944 Borges collection includes "The Library of Babel", "The Circular Ruins" and "Death and the Compass"?

A) Labyrinths

B) El Aleph

C) Ficciones

D) The Book of Sand

Answer · why

C) Ficciones

Ficciones grew out of a slimmer book that Argentina's National Prize jury passed over, a snub that led the magazine Sur to devote part of an issue to ...

Q 03/05

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

A) Samuel Beckett

B) Albert Camus

C) Vladimir Nabokov

D) Graham Greene

Answer · why

A) Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett shared the prize, which brought Borges, until then little translated into English, to international attention.

Q 04/05

Which condition overtook Borges in his fifties?

A) Blindness

B) Deafness

C) Paralysis

D) Aphasia

Answer · why

A) Blindness

Blindness crept up on him as it had on his father; he never learned Braille, and from then on he composed in his head and dictated.

Q 05/05

In 1955 Borges was appointed director of which Argentine institution?

A) National Theatre

B) National Academy of Letters

C) National Museum of Fine Arts

D) National Library

Answer · why

D) National Library

The National Library made a director of a man whose first library job, in 1938, had been as an assistant in a quiet municipal branch.