Book description
'On days of combat, the crew would mix gunpowder with their liquor'
Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new
realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome pr cis of
impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories there is
danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an
encyclopaedia of an unknown planet - and Borges's unique imagination
and intellect plays throughout.
This book includes The Widow Ching-Pirate, Monk Eastman,
Purveyor of Iniquities, The Uncivil Teacher of Court
Etiquette K tsuk , Tl n, Uqbar, Orbis
Tertius, Pierre Menard and Author of the Quixote.
Jorges Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and educated in
Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he
published many collections of poems, essays and short stories, before
his death in Geneva in June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the
International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill
Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his
'outstanding contribution to literature'. In a tribute to Borges, Mario
Vargas Llosa wrote: 'His is a world of clear, pure, and at the same time
unusual ideas... expressed in words of great directness and restraint.
[He] was a superb storyteller.' He has a reasonable claim, with Kafka
and Joyce, to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century.
