Jorge Luis Borges

Argentinean writer, a literary giant with short stories, essays, poetry and all shades and types of books. He had a razor sharp wit and a self-depreciating style. Actually, Borges was a shy man, a vegetarian, blind for nearly 30 years and partly deaf. He had a powerful imagination and was a shy, retiring man who had a strong bond with his mother, living with her until her death at 99, when he was 75.

Acclaimed as one of the greatest modern writers, he was compared to Edgar Allan Poe and Frank Kafka, a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature. His works were translated into more than 20 languages, and he won scores of literary prizes for his production of more than 35 volumes of writing.

Borges lived the last three months of his life in Geneva, Switzerland where he married his second wife in April 1986, inasmuch as the marriage would not be recognized in Argentina, where divorce is not legal. Died of liver cancer on 14 June 1986, Switzerland.