Selected Non-Fictions Book

This unique volume presents a Borges almost entirely unknown to American readers: his extraordinary non—fiction prose. Borges' unlimited curiosity and almost superhuman erudition become, in his essays, reviews, lectures, and political and cultural notes, a vortex for seemingly the entire universe: Dante and Ellery Queen; Shakespeare and the Kabbalah; the history of angels and the history of the tango; the Buddha, Bette Davis, and the Dionne Quints.

"The sheer range of cultural territory covered in these essays compels awe and bemusement." —Robert Irwin, The Washington Post Book World

"Superb ... indispensable to both the longtime Borges reader and the newcomer."—Alexander Theroux, The Wall Street Journal

"One reads these many essays ... with amazement at their author's impetuous curiosity and penetrating intelligence." —Richard Bernstein, the New York Times

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in criticism
Chosen International Book of the Year by George Steiner in the Times Literary Supplement

Winner of the National Book Critic's Circle Award for Criticism.