These wide-ranging conversations have an exceptionally open and intimate tone, giving us a personal glimpse of one of the most fascinating figures in contemporary world literature. Interviewer Fernando Sorrentino, an Argentinian writer and anthologist, is endowed with literary acumen, sensitivity, urbanity, and an encyclopedic memory of Jorge Luis Borges' work (in his prologue, Borges jokes that Sorrentino knows his work "much better than I do"). Borges wanders from nostalgic reminiscence to literary criticism, and from philosophical speculation to political pronouncements. His thoughts on literature alone run the gamut from the Bible and Homer to Ernest Hemingway and Julio Cortázar. We learn that Dante is the writer who has impressed Borges most, that Borges considers Federico García Lorca to be a "second-rate poet," and that he feels Adolfo Bioy Casares is one of the most important authors of this century. Borges dwells lovingly on Buenos Aires, too. From the preface: For seven afternoons, the teller of tales preceded me, opening tall doors which revealed unsuspected spiral staircases, through the National Library's pleasant maze of corridors, in search of a secluded little room where we would not be interrupted by the telephone…The Borges who speaks to us in this book is a courteous, easy-going gentleman who verifies no quotations, who does not look back to correct mistakes, who pretends to have a poor memory; he is not the terse Jorge Luis Borges of the printed page, that Borges who calculates and measures each comma and each parenthesis. Sorrentino and translator Clark M. Zlotchew have included an appendix on the Latin American writers mentioned by Borges

Jorge Luis Borges, Argentina s master fabulist, was also an extraordinary conversationalist. There s not a subject he doesn t throw surprising new light on, whether it s to do with Kipling or tango. In fact, there s an impish element in his thinking. In these dialogues with a receptive Osvaldo Ferrari, he covers Buddhism, love, Henry James, Dante and much more as he circles round and digresses at whim. One cannot be sure where the 84-year-old blind man s wit will lead him, except that it s his form of freedom. Even if he s covered the subject before, this time round there s a new flash of insight. He s an optimist. There s always more to say. As with his written work as a whole, these dialogues configure a loose autobiography of a subtle, teasing mind. Looking back on his long life, it s no surprise that time and dreaming become topics, but these dialogues are not a memoir for all time is now. As in his tale The Other, where two Borges meet up on a bench beside the river Charles, we have a dialogue between a young poet and the elder teller of tales where all experience floats in a frightening miracle that defies linear time."

This anthology of interviews with Borges features more than a dozen conversations that cover all phases of his life and work.

A collection of interviews now available from New Directions for the first time The words of a genius: Borges at Eighty transcends our expectations of ordinary conversation. In these interviews with Barnstone, Dick Cavett, and Alastair Reid, Borges touches on favorite writers (Whitman, Poe, Emerson) and familiar themes — labyrinths, mystic experiences, and death — and always with great, throw-away humor. For example, discussing nightmares, he concludes,“When I wake up, I wake to something worse. It’s the astonishment of being myself.”

In this evocative work of what the author in his afterword calls “a kindof novelistic memoir,” Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland—in flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. Borges—visiting his translator in Scotland—is in his seventies, blind and frail. When Borges hears that Parini owns a 1957 Morris Minor, he declares a long-held wish to visit the Highlands, where he hopes to meet a man in Inverness who is interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travel, stopping at various sites of historical interest, the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of Western literature and ideas, while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges’s idiosyncratic world of labyrinths, mirrors, and doubles shimmers into being, their escapades take a surreal turn. Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It’s also a magical mystery tour of an era, like our own, in which uncertainties abound, and when—as ever—it’s the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

An intimate and personal glimpse inside the mind of the leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, through his own words... “I believe in the kindness of others, and that I must love them without fear.”—Jorge Bergoglio, Pope Francis Jorge Bergoglio is the first Latin American pope, the first Jesuit pope, and the first to take the name Francis, after Saint Francis of Assisi, the thirteenth-century friar known for his charity and kindness. Here, in a series of extensive interviews conducted over two years, he reveals the very image of a humble priest and inspired teacher. This is a portrait of a man more interested in substance than style. In spontaneous, intimate terms, he talks about his childhood and family life, his first job, the discovery of his calling, and his early days in the seminary. He was a teacher of psychology and literature who befriended writers such as Jorge Luis Borges. He cites Homer and Cervantes with ease, and names Babette’s Feast as a favorite film and Marc Chagall as a favorite painter. He also takes on uncomfortable subjects: the declining number of priests and nuns; celibacy; the scandals that have rocked the Church; and his experience with the military dictatorship of Argentina. Through his own words, this book reveals a man who is thoughtful and witty, learned and introspective—one whose actions and words reflect his deeply rooted humility. Also included in this volume are Pope Francis’s own writings and reflections—full of wisdom and inspiration.