Argentine · 1899–1986
Argentine writer who made the short story infinite. Born in Buenos Aires, educated in Europe, he returned to work as a librarian while writing poems, essays, and the ficciones that changed literature. Labyrinths, gardens of forking paths, infinite libraries—his stories are philosophical puzzles disguised as adventures. He went blind and dictated for the last decades of his life. The Nobel committee notoriously passed him over; his influence exceeds any prize. Every subsequent fabulist and postmodernist responds to him.