Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 24 August 1899, and died on 14 June 1986. He was a writer of short stories, poems and essays, and also worked as a translator and librarian. As a boy he learned English at home, and he spent his teenage years in Europe, where he read widely in several languages. Back in Argentina, he became a leading figure in the country's literary life.

Borges is best known for compact, dazzling pieces of fiction that treat labyrinths, mirrors, infinite libraries, dreams and forged histories as ways of thinking about time, identity and knowledge. His eyesight failed gradually, and he was almost wholly blind by his fifties, yet he kept writing by dictation. He was director of the National Library of Argentina. His work has influenced writers around the world, and he is widely counted among the great authors of the twentieth century.