The Library of Babel

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 24, 1899. His mother, Leonor Rita Acevedo Suarez, was from Uruguay, and her family was involved in key battles during the Argentine War of Independence. His father, Jorge Guillermo Borges Haslam, was a prominent lawyer and a novelist who wrote the book El Caudillo in 1921. He taught Jorge English and introduced him to key writers of English literature, such as H. G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Edgar Allan Poe, whose speculative and science fiction influenced the young Borges immensely.

Borges’s educational journey began in his family home, where he remained until the age of 11. He was proficient in Spanish and English and delved into the works of Shakespeare when he was just 12. The Borges household had an extensive English library, housing a collection exceeding a thousand volumes. In 1914, Borges and his family relocated to Geneva, where he obtained his baccalaureate degree from the Collège de Genève. The family remained in Europe until 1921, moving among various cities in Switzerland and Spain. In Madrid, Borges became part of the Ultraist movement, a radical collective of writers and philosophers—including Guillermo de Torre, Juan Larrea, and Gerardo Diego—who rebelled against traditional literary and artistic conventions by embracing avant-garde aesthetics and experimental

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