Selected Non-fictions

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Viking, 1999 - Literary Collections - 559 pages
"It will come as a surprise to many readers that the greater part of Jorge Luis Borges's extraordinary writing was not in the genres of fiction or poetry, but in various forms of non-fiction prose. His thousands of pages of essays, reviews, prologues, lectures, and notes on politics and culture - though revered in Latin America and Europe as among his finest work - have scarcely been translated into English. Selected Non-Fictions presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers. Here is the dazzling metaphysician speculating on the nature of time and reality and the inventions of heaven and hell, and the almost superhumanly erudite reader of the world's literatures, from Homer to Ray Bradbury, James Joyce to Lady Murasaki. Here, too, the political Borges, taking courageous stands against fascism, antisemitism, and the Perón dictatorship; Borges the movie critic, on King Kong and Citizen Kane and the Borgesian art of dubbing; and Borges the regular columnist for the Argentine equivalent of the Ladies' Home Journal, writing hilarious book reviews and capsule biographies of modern writers...Selected Non-Fictions presents more than 160 of these astonishing writings, from his youthful manifestos to his last meditations on his favorite books. More than a hundred of these pieces have never before appeared in English, and all have been rendered in brilliant new translations by Esther Allen, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Eliot Weinberger. This unique selection presents Borges as at once a deceptively self-effacing guide to the universe and the inventor of a universe that is an indispensable guide to Borges." --Publisher's website.

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Contents

After Images
10
A History of Angels
16
A Profession of Literary Faith
23
Copyright

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About the author (1999)

One of the twentieth century's greatest writers, Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) published numerous collections of poems, essays, and fiction, Director of the National Library of Buenos Aires from 1955 to 1973, Borges was awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters, honoris causa, from both Columbia and Oxford. He received various literary awards over the course of his career, including the International Publisher's Prize (which he shared with Samuel Beckett in 1961), the Jerusalem Prize, and the Alfonso Reyes Prize. Eliot Weinberger was born on February 6, 1949. He is a writer, editor and translator. His work has been published in 30 languages. He first gained recognition from his translations of Nobel Prize winner and poet Octavio Paz. These translations include Collected Poems 1957-1987 and In Light of India. He has also translated other writers such as Vicente Huidobro's Altazor. He received the National Board Critic's Circle Award for his edition of Borge's Selected Non-Fictions. Today Eliot Weinberger is mostly known for his essays and political articles focusing on U.S. politics and foreign policy. His literary writings include An Elemental Thing, which was selected by The Village Voice as one of the "20 Best Books of the Year for 2009. He is also the co-author of a study of Chinese poetry translations, 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei. In 2000 he was the only American literary writer to be awarded the order of the Aztec Eagle by the government of Mexico.

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