Author Jorge Luis Borges was born on August 24, 1899, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His real name was Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo. He passed away on June 14, 1986.
He was born and raised in a wealthy family with a lawyer father. Influenced by his father's avid reading, Borges spent most of his free time as a boy reading. When Borges was 15, his father needed eye treatment, so the family moved to Switzerland. Borges enrolled at Calvin College and spent the next seven years in Europe.
After World War I, Borges returned to Argentina. There, he witnessed the astonishing growth of Buenos Aires. Expressing this emotion, he published his first collection of poems, "The Rhapsody of Buenos Aires," in 1923, marking the beginning of his career as a writer. Borges continued to publish a series of poems and essays. One of these, "The Language of the Argentine," won second place in the Buenos Aires Civic Literature Prize, and his name gradually gained public recognition. Meanwhile, in his late twenties, he began writing short stories, publishing works such as "The Men Who Fought," "The Man of the Rose-Colored Streets," and "The World History of Disgrace." In 1938, an accident left him in critical condition for a month. Perhaps this experience inspired Borges to begin writing short stories. The works he wrote around this time were compiled in the collection "The Garden of Eight Forks," published in 1942. His works, packed with episodes beyond human comprehension, were highly acclaimed during the subsequent boom in the literary technique of "magic realism." In 1944, "The Fantastic Facts" was published, adding nine new stories. Borges received the Argentine Writers' Association's Grand Prize in recognition of these achievements. Meanwhile, Juan Perón's dictatorship was in power in Argentina at the time. Borges's criticism led to him being expelled from the library where he had worked for nine years and subsequently working as an editor at a local publishing house. However, after the Perón regime was overthrown in the 1955 revolution, Borges became director of the public library. The following year, he became professor of English and American literature at the University of Buenos Aires. In his later years, Borges's works were translated and received worldwide acclaim. In 1961, he received the first International Publication Award. His literary work continued to receive various awards, including the Madonnina Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Cervantes Prize. He himself received honorary doctorates from prestigious universities around the world.
