Borges and His Fiction

The author of several works of criticism and fiction, Gene H. Bell-Villada is Professor and Chair of Romance Languages at Williams College in Massachusetts.

• Preface to the Revised Edition Preface to the 1981 Edition Acknowledgments Note on Page References Chronology Part I. Borges's Worlds 1. Buenos Aires and Beyond 2. A Sort of Life, a Special Mind 3. What Borges Did for Prose Fiction Part II. Borges's Fictions 4. The Apprentice Fiction Maker 5. Ficciones I: Doubles, Dreamers, and Detectives 6. Ficciones II: The World within a Book 7. El Aleph I: Doubles and Puzzles 8. El Aleph II: Tales of Action and Violence 9. El Aleph III: The Visionary Experience Part III. Borges's Place in Literature 10. Dreamtigers and Later Works: A Tentative Summation 11. Literature and Politics North and South 12. Borges as Argentine Author: And Other Self-Evident (If Often Ignored) Truths Abbreviations Notes Selected Bibliography Index

From reviews of the first edition: "A compulsively readable account of the life and works of our greatest ... writer of fantasy. With a keen appreciation of Borges himself and a pleasant disregard for the critical cliches, Bell-Villada tells us all we really want to know about the modern master--from pronouncing his name to understanding the stories." New York Daily News "Of the scores of Borges studies by now published in English, Bell-Villada's excellent book stands out as one of the freshest and most generally helpful... Lay readers and specialists alike will find his book a valuable and highly readable companion to Ficciones and El Aleph." --Choice