The Widow Ching--Pirate

Jorge Luis Borges

Feb 2011 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

'On days of combat, the crew would mix gunpowder with their liquor'

Borges became famous as a writer of short stories that contained new realities: elaborately conceived, ingenious and gamesome précis of impossible worlds or imaginary books. In these five stories there is danger on the high seas, an ungracious teacher of etiquette and an encyclopaedia of an unknown planet - and Borges's unique imagination and intellect plays throughout.

This book includes The Widow Ching-Pirate, Monk Eastman, Purveyor of Iniquities, The Uncivil Teacher of Court Etiquette Kôtsuké, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Pierre Menard and Author of the Quixote.

Ratings and reviews

The free sample contains metadata and the five lines of the contents. I wouldn't call this a sample.

About the author

Jorges Luis Borges was born in Buenos Aires in 1899 and 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 June 1986. In 1961 Borges shared the International Publishers' Prize with Samuel Beckett. The Ingram Merrill Foundation granted him its Annual Literary Award in 1966 for his 'outstanding contribution to literature'. In a tribute to Borges, Mario Vargas Llosa wrote: '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.' He has a reasonable claim, with Kafka and Joyce, to be the most influential writer of the twentieth century.