Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges, KBE (Spanish: audio (help·info); 24 August 1899 – 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. His work embraces the "character of unreality in all literature". His best-known books,
Ficciones (
Fictions) and
The Aleph (
El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre. Critic Ángel Flores, the first to use the term magical realism to define a genre that reacted against the dominant realism and naturalism of the 19th century, considers the beginning of the movement to be the release of Borges's
A Universal History of Infamy (
Historia universal de la infamia). However, some critics would consider Borges to be a predecessor and not actually a magical realist. His late poems dialogue with such cultural figures as Spinoza, Camões, and Virgil.