The Book of Imaginary Beings

Author(s): Jorge Luis Borges

Classics

In a perfect pairing of talent, this volume blends twenty illustrations by Peter Sis with Jorge Luis Borges's 1957 compilation of 116 "strange creatures conceived through time and space by the human imagination," from dragons and centaurs to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat and the Morlocks of H. G. Wells's The Time Machine. A lavish feast of exotica brought vividly to life with art commissioned specifically for this volume, The Book of Imaginary Beings will delight readers of classic fantasy as well as Borges's many admirers.


 


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The incomparable imagination of Jorge Luis Borges runs wild in this kaleidoscopic miscellany of fantastical creatures.

"It's a book I look forward to as research, but even more as a kid-at-heart fan of the unnatural, the impossible, the feared" -- Andrew Pyper "He is one of the giants of twentieth-century literature who has vastly enriched the textures of vocabulary of our fantasies and speculation. Only Borges could dream the world with such intellectual rigour" Ian McEwan "Borges is a genius of the first order" -- Martin Amis "One of Borges's great creations... The Book of Imaginary Beings tosses stone after stone into the subterranean caverns of the reader's mind. It takes us along passageways and turns corners to reveal strange shapes and images, some of which may precede and outlast anything conceived by man" Guardian "Jorge Luis Borges, the century's most flagrant, ingenious and industrious compiler of manuscripts that fall short of reality" New York Times

Jorge Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and was educated in Europe. One of the most widely acclaimed writers of our time, he published many collections of poems, essays and short stories before his death in Geneva in 1986. He was director of the Argentine National Library from 1955 until 1973. Mario Vargas Llosa, in a tribute to Borges, has written: 'His is a world of clear, pure, and at the same time unusual ideas expressed in words of great directness and restraint. [He] was a superb storyteller. One reads most of Borges' tales with the hypnotic interest usually reserved for reading detective fiction...'

General Fields

  • : 9780099442639
  • : Penguin Random House
  • : Vintage
  • : 0.127
  • : November 2002
  • : 198mm X 129mm X 11mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Jorge Luis Borges
  • : Paperback
  • : 0210
  • : English
  • : 398.4/69
  • : 176