This book, available for the first time in English, offers a thorough introductory reading of Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most remarkable and influential writers of the twentieth century. Julio Premat, a specialist in the field of Borges studies, presents the main questions posed by Borges's often paradoxical writing, and leads the novice through the complexity and breadth of Borges's vast literary production.

Originally published in French by an Argentine ex-pat living in Paris, Borges includes the Argentine specificities of Borges’s work—specificities that are often unrecognized or glossed over in Anglophone readings.

This book is a boon for university students of philosophy and literature, teachers and researchers in these fields who are looking to better understand this complex author, and anyone interested in the advanced study of literature. Somewhere between a guidebook and an exhaustive work of advanced research, Borges is the ultimate stepping-stone into the deeper Borgesian world.

Julio Premat is a professor at the Université Paris 8, a member of the Laboratoire d’Etudes Romanes, and a senior member of the Institut Universitaire de France.

Amanda Murphy is a translator and an associate professor of English and translation studies at the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris.

Introduction | A Classic of Modernity

Part I | A Single Sightless Self, a Plural I: Figures
Chapter 1 | The Works of a Hero
Chapter 2 | The Son at Work
Chapter 3 | The Clairvoyance of the Blindman

Part II | A Pensive Sentiment: Materials
Chapter 4 | Impelled by his Germanic Blood: Biography and the Meaning of the Story
Chapter 5 | The Universe, Whodunit?: Reading and the Detective Novel
Chapter 6 | The Library: Tradition, Betrayal, Transgression
Chapter 7 | Forms of Eternity

Notes
Bibliography