Borges and Me: An Encounter

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.

Author: Jay Parini
Publisher: Anchor Books
Published: 11/23/2021
Pages: 320
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 7.95h x 5.28w x 0.94d
ISBN: 9781984899491

About the Author
AY PARINI is a poet, novelist, and biographer who teaches at Middlebury College. His six books of poetry include New and Collected Poems, 1975-2015. He has written eight novels, including The Damascus Road, Benjamin's Crossing, The Apprentice Lover, The Passages of H.M., and The Last Station, the last made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer. His biographical subjects include John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, William Faulkner, and, most recently, Gore Vidal. His nonfiction works include Jesus: The Human Face of God, Why Poetry Matters, and Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America.