This page collects links to Borges-related reviews. If you know of a review we could add, or would you like to submit one for inclusion, please send it in!
Collected Fictions
Borges’ Dark Mirror
J.M. Coetzee
New York Review of Books, 22 October 1998
The Nobel-prize winning author J.M. Coetzee looks at Borges and his stories. Requires a subscription or a $4.00 fee.
Birds of America, Borges, and the Book Festival
Jordan Mackay
Austin Chronicle, 20-26 November 1998
Mackay discusses Borges, Pierre Menard, and Andrew Hurley’s translation. He finds, like many reviewers, that “the translations in this volume are superbly readable but occasionally lose the poetry that other translators found in Borges.”
Books About Borges
Unthinking Thinking, by Floyd Merrel
Floyd Merrel’s Unthinking Thinking
Silvia G. Dapía
Variacciones Borges, 1996
Dapía finds Merrel’s book on Borges and mathematics “a fascinating book, recommendable for its goals, scope, and knowledge of secondary material.”
Borges, A Life, by James Woodall
James Woodall’s Borges, A Life
Donald L. Shaw
Review No. 57, 1997
A very insightful and balanced review of Woodall’s biography.
Borges: A Life, by Edwin Williamson
Beyond the Labyrinth
Julio Ortega
Boston Globe, 1 August 2004
Ortega writes, “Almost an oral history, the book is a fine discussion of Borges' involvement in Argentine politics, literary life, fame, travel, as well as political redemption.”
Taking Borges to the Head-Shrinker
Bob Blaisdell
San Francisco Chronicle, 8 August 2004
Blaisdell critiques Williamson’s approach as intrusively psychoanalytical.
Borges: A Life
Michael Dirda
Washington Post, 8 August 2004
Dirda finds Williamson’s work “a useful and important biography, if slightly flawed in its focus.”
Modern Master
Ariel Gonzalez
Miami Herald, 8 August 2004
A very positive review.
Borges: A Life by Edwin Williamson
Allen Barra
Salon.com, 27 August 2004
In a rather idiosyncratic review, Barra speaks quite favorably of Williamson’s biography.
The Immortal
Christopher Hitchens
The Atlantic, September 2004
Hitchens labels Williamson’s biography as “althogether first-rate.” (Subscribers only)
Sightless Seer of Buenos Aires
The Economist, 9 September 2004
A favorable, but fairly descriptive, by-the-numbers review.
Other Borges Reviews
Imaginary Borges
William H. Gass
New York Review of Books, 20 November 1969
Novelist William Gass on Borges’ The Book of Imaginary Beings, Richard Burgin’s Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, and Ronald Christ’s The Narrow Act: Borges’ Art of Allusion. Requires a subscription or a $4.00 fee.
Sean Kernan’s The Secret Books
Allen B. Ruch
The Modern Word, 16 November 1999
A review of Sean Kernan’s haunting homage to Borges and books.
Rhys Hughes’ A New Universal History of Infamy
Allen B. Ruch
The Modern Word, 20 March 2004
A look at Welsh writer Rhys Hughes’ “update” of a Borges classic.
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