From dreamers and bibliophiles to grunge rockers and artists, Buenos Aires is a thriving city of culture that offers something for everyone. Of course, tango classes and Spanish lessons await the common tourist and expatriate, but we’ve scoured the city for some of the most interesting alternative workshops to try out while you’re in town. Note that though many are about working with your hands, all of these courses are conducted in Spanish, so a basic grasp of the language will help get the most out of them.

Mantra del Sur (courtesy of Mantra del Sur)

Mantras Del Sur

Walking into this bohemian, retail shop is like stepping into a multi-coloured world of love. The converted mechanics garage has a floor made from the refurbished pinewood of a boat pulled out of the Riachuelo, and crocheted clothes and home décor fill the racks and shelves. Inside, Lucia Alvaréz is not only using recycled and natural materials to make fashion eco-friendly, but she is also revolutionising a world that was formally reserved for the above-80 age group. “It’s an energy,” says Alvaréz , as she talked about her project to beautify the city by enveloping trees in crocheted blankets around Buenos Aires. The apparel designer offers technical workshops in appliqués, embroideries and patchwork for the inventive and fashionable, and will help with just about any project that involves a needle and thread.

Angel J. Carranza 1668/79, 3103-2348, mantrasdelsur.com.ar

Frequency and Duration: A weekly 2-hour class, Cost: $250 monthly + materials

Planetario de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires 'Galileo Galilei' (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Planetario de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires ¨Galileo Galilei¨

To infinity and beyond! Since the South Pole faces the galactic centre of the Milky Way, stargazers and philosophers can see billions of stars more clearly from the Southern hemisphere. In addition to the clearer skies, Argentina´s proximity to the southernmost point on earth also enables an astronomer to see a greater number of circumpolar constellations like the Southern Cross and Carina. In this course offered by the planetarium, Mariano Ribas discusses the new model of the solar system, the eight planets and their moons, the “Asteroid Belt” and the threat of asteroids, the “Kuiper Belt”, Pluto and the “dwarf planets,” theories and revelations about comets, space missions, space exploration, life chances on Mars, extra-solar planets, “Hot Jupiter,” and the chances of extra-terrestrial life. And that´s just the first five classes.

Avenida Sarmiento and Belisario Roldán 4772-9265 planetario.gov.ar/otras_cursos.html

Frequency and Duration: A weekly 2½-hour class, Cost: Free. Hands-on class observation with telescopes subject to favourable weather conditions.

Besos de Vidrio (Photo: Natalie Schachar)

Besos de Vidrio

For the not-too-clumsy hobby searcher, glass art beckons. Although the form is lesser known than its cousins, sculpture and ceramics, this branch of decorative arts has been around since Roman times and is now available to anyone in Buenos Aires who would like to continue on the neo-classical tradition. Surprisingly, glass can be moulded on an artist’s whim, and a weekly workshop details how to cut, polish, shape and colour any lustred surface. Tiffany lamps, mirrors, accessories— if it has vitreous properties you can probably make it here.

Guatemala 5794 4776-6942 www.besosdevidrio.com.ar

Frequency and Duration: A weekly 2-hour class, Cost: $200 monthly + materials

Olivos Custom Guitars (Photo: Diego Espinosa)

Olivos Custom Guitars

Forget Les Paul and Fender Stratocaster – here you can build our own guitar. Starting from a template that allows the form of a guitar to be replicated onto wood, and then using scaled diagrams, Lucas Rodriguez Fontán walks his students through the entire electric guitar and bass making process. From calibrating the neck to wiring circuits and inputting the bridge and tailpiece systems, Fontán assures that both beginners and techies can build and design their own instrument. Depending on how much time is invested, the instrument-maker estimates that it typically takes between six and eight months to finish a guitar and costs a little under US$1000 total for all the materials and the course.

Córdoba 2965 Olivos 1636, Buenos Aires; 5407-0011, olivoscustomguitars.com.ar

Frequency and Duration: A weekly 4-hour class, Cost: $450 monthly + materials

Jorge Luis Borges (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Understand and Enjoy Borges I and II

In the intricate world of Jorge Luis Borges, animals, memories, dreams and myths coalesce in surrealist circles to form some of the best fiction ever written. The Argentine essayist, short-story writer and poet mastered the narrative form, but also altered it forever by reassigning conventional notions of space and time and interweaving realistic mysteries and profundities into his fantastical works. Through the workshop, Alicia Ardila interprets the profuse symbolism found in the texts and essays, guides readers through Borge’s complex use of language, and assures that the universalist, philosophical ideas of the author become more accessible to all.

Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas Corrientes 2038, 4954-5521/4954-5523,
rojas.uba.ar/cursos/adultos_mayores/contenidos_literatura.php#10

Frequency and Duration: A weekly 2-hour class Cost: $200 monthly

As the 14th international BAFICI film festival gets underway and the city is awash with cinephiles, we thought we’d give you a run down of great Argentine directors so that you can hold your own this week when chatting to the moustache-twiddling, beret-sporting, Deleuze loving (that one’s for the real pros) film enthusiasts.

Far from a comprehensive list, our Top 5 Argentine Directors sets out to tell you five directors you should know about, and should give you plenty to chew on while BAFICI is underway.

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson

Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (1924-78)

The grandfather of Argentine film, Leopoldo Torre Nilsson helped bring prestige to Argentine cinema and was the most important figure in inspiring the younger generation of film-makers who started the new-wave in Argentine cinema at the beginning of the 1960s. According to international filmmaker Roman Polanski, he helped bring Argentine cinema up to international quality without ignoring subjects that were integral to Argentina.

Obsessed with the decline of the bourgeois society in his country, his films were often filled with sexual and societal frustration and peopled with dark characters with shadowy pasts who move in decadent environments. He directed. with humour and finesse.

Born in Buenos Aires, the son of the pioneering Argentine director, Leopoldo Torres Ríos, Leopoldo spent his formative years working under with his father and lost in the books of Jorge Luis Borges, Marcel Proust and James Joyce. His mother was an Argentine of Swedish descent and he cited her compatriot, the director Ingmar Bergman, as one of his greatest influences. He lived young and directed fast, making 30 features in little over 25 years.

His most fruitful collaboration was with his wife, the writer Beatriz Guido. Together, they adapted her novels ‘La mano en la trampa’ and ‘La casa del ángel’ into screenplays that became two of his most successful and critically acclaimed films. When the latter came out, French filmmaker and critic Éric Rohmer called it “the best film to have arrived from South America since the beginnings of cinema.”

No stranger to Argentine literature, Torre Nilsson was a friend of the author Ernesto Sabato and also known for directing screenplays based on the work of other Argentine writers including Roberto Arlt, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges, and gauchesque poet, José Hernández.

For more information find Leopoldo Torre Nilsson on IMDB or visit his website

Leonardo Favio

Leonardo Favio (born 1938) 

Born Fuad Jorge Jury, Leonardo Favio lived through a tough childhood in a small town in the north of Mendoza. An Argentine of Syrian descent, he is a true artistic polymath who built a career out of directing, writing, composing, singing and acting. Much lauded in his home continent, many believe he never got the recognition he deserved on the international scene.

Working under the tutelage of Argentine director Torre Nilsson, he was invited to act in films at the end of the 1950s, and the beginning of his career as a director followed shortly after with the production of his first short film in 1960. Four years later, his debut feature ‘Crónica de un niño solo’ cemented his place at the forefront of Argentine cinema.

The influence of filmmakers like the Spanish born Luis Buñuel and founder of French new-wave cinema François Truffaut was evident, although his personal style and strong aesthetics also shone through. He turned the focus away from a popular fixation with the urban bourgeoisie, towards the tough life at the fringes of society. For this reason he is credited with helping to break the barrier between popular culture and high art.

His films, despite shirking away from the mainstream and embracing the experimental, enjoyed a mass appeal in Argentina. Another of his most acclaimed films, ‘El romance del Aniceta y la Francisca’, is considered by many to be one of Argentina’s best.

An element in his life that cannot be ignored is his vehement support of Peronism. In 1999 he released an exhaustive 340-minute documentary about his political idol: ex-president and controversial figure Juan Domingo Perón.

In 2010, he was appointed Argentina’s Cultural Ambassador by fellow Peronist and current president, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.

For more information find Leonardo Favio on IMDB

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas (born 1936)

Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas was born in Buenos Aires province and has made his name as one of the most important Argentine directors and documentary-makers.

Unlike Favio, Solanas has gained a global recognition, winning the Golden Bear at Germany’s Berlinale, the Special Jury prize at the Venice film festival and the Best Director award at Cannes.

Solanas’ work comes inextricably linked with politics. Any discussion on the director must surely go hand-in-hand with the mention of ‘Grupo Cine Liberación’ – a cinematic movement with which he was strongly affiliated. In the 1960s and 70s, the movement offered a reaction to Latin American politics and global cinema, focusing on making films that were socially and politically committed rather than purely entertainment driven. With their militant cinema they tried to demonstrate that Argentina was a society in crisis.

Their trademark was to make films anonymously, a move that encouraged collective creative processes and also protected them from political repression at a time when dictatorships were starting to emerge across the continent. Their most acclaimed film from the period was a four-hour documentary titled ‘La hora de los hornos: Notas y testimonios sobre el neocolonialismo, la violencia y la liberación’. The film became a symbol of activist cinema during the zenith of leftist politics.

For more information find Fernando ‘Pino’ Solanas on IMDB or visit his website

Armando Bó

Armando Bó (1914-81)

The inclusion of director Armando Bó in this list might raise a few eyebrows, but his influence and cult following should not be underestimated.

US filmmaker John Waters once said that when he was searching for inspiration he would look to the Argentine director’s films and wish he spoke Spanish. And well, that’s about as apt an introduction as the director could hope for. He described ‘Fuego’ (Bó’s best-known film) as “a huge influence”, admitting “I forgot how much I stole”.

In a time when sexploitation films were taken more seriously and the line between art-house and soft-core was slightly blurrier, Armando Bó was king. This auteur of sorts made 30 films between 1954 and 1980 – none of which were too subtle or nuanced. He hacked his way through plots, played for slapstick laughs and flashed a lot of flesh but the audience loved it and kept coming back for more.

He made 27 films starring the now retired model and actress Isabel Sarli. Sarli was Miss Argentina 1955, the Brigitte Bardot of Latin America and the filmmaker’s real-life lover.

“You inspired us all to a life of cheap exhibitionism, exaggerated sexual desires and a love for all that is trash-ridden in cinema,” Waters once said of Sarli, but it’s a comment that works just fine for Bó too.

For more information find Armando Bó on IMDB 

Juan José Campanella

Juan José Campanella (born 1959)

Probably the most recognisable name on this list for a contemporary audience, Juan José Campanella is a member of the exclusive two-man club of Oscar-winning Argentine directors. He has spent much of his working life in the United States and has directed several English language films as well as a number of North American television series.

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, he began studying engineering at university but famously dropped out with only a year to go to pursue a career in filmmaking.

He is credited with helping to restore pride in the Argentine film industry which has historically suffered from “chronic self-depreciation”. “In Argentina, a Hollywood movie is innocent until proven guilty. An Argentine movie is the other way around. I have to work really hard to break down that barrier,” he told one US publication in an interview.

Having been previously nominated for an Oscar in 2001 for his film ‘El hijo de la novia’ (‘The son of the bride’), Campanella’s talents as a director were finally recognised in 2010 when his film ‘El secreto de sus ojos’ (‘The secret in their eyes’) was awarded the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

A classy, unpredictable film noir set in 1975 Buenos Aires – it brought the spotlight back on Argentine cinema and helped make him the most bankable homegrown director in Argentine history.

He is currently working on an animated feature called ‘Metegol’ (‘Foosball’) and, the way things are going, it probably won’t be the last time we see him fumbling at his collar nervously at another red carpet event.

For more information find Juan J. Campanella on IMDB

As we approach the first anniversary of his death, the Beyond Borges series arrives at the Argentine essayist and existentialist author Ernesto Sabato.

Ernesto Sabato, the essayist and novelist known for bringing Existentialism to Argentina

As revered at the time of his passing as Jorge Luis Borges, Sabato is widely-known for his role in bringing about justice for the crimes committed by the nation’s military leaders during Argentina’s most infamous dictatorship.

Having received a great deal of critical acclaim for his novels ‘El túnel’ and ‘Sobre héroes y tombas’ he was awarded the 1984 Miguel de Cervantes prize and is commonly regarded one of South America’s most influential writers.

Scientific Beginnings

Born in 1911 in Riojas, a small town in Buenos Aires province, Sabato was the tenth of 11 sons born to Italian immigrant parents. Whilst studying physics and mathematics at the University of La Plata he joined a movement of student activists calling for university reform and independence. By 1933 he had set up a campaign group of communist ideals and, during the same year, was appointed general secretary of the Communist Youth Federation.

Recognising Sabato’s waning belief in Stalin’s methods a year later, the Communist Party of Argentina ordered him to attend the International Lenin School (ILS) for two years. En-route to Moscow he travelled first to Belgium as a delegate of the party and onto Paris, where he is said to have drafted his first unpublished novel, ‘La fuente muda’.

On his return to Argentina he married Matilde Kusminsky Richter, a woman he’d met at a Marxist lecture in Belgium three years earlier, and in 1938 gained his PhD in physics from the University of La Plata aged 27.

Sabato's signature (Photo: Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Nobel laureate Bernardo Houssay helped to secure Sabato a research fellowship at the prestigious Institut Curie in Paris, which placed him among surrealist writers in an environment that would only draw out his creativity.

“During that time of antagonisms, I buried myself with electrometers and graduated cylinders during the morning, and spent the nights in bars with the delirious surrealists. At the Dôme and in the Deux Magots, inebriated with those heralds of chaos and excess, we used to spend many hours creating exquisite cadavers,” he said.

In 1939 he transferred to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and returned to Argentina one year later, intent on leaving science behind. Disillusioned with what he called the dehumanising effects of science, Sabato turned to literature, where he found the unexplained aspects of the human personality relayed in German romanticism and existentialism.

Whilst he became almost immediately active in Argentina’s literary circles he continued juggling his writing and teaching careers until 1943, when he eventually made a more permanent transition to writing.

Echoes of Existentialism

Sabato published essays on a variety of scientific and literary topics, but famously burned many of his manuscripts. A surviving trio of novels includes the existentialist classic ‘El túnel’ (1948), ‘Sobre héroes y tumbas’ (1961), and the lesser known ‘Abaddón el exterminador’ (1974). Though the second is generally considered his best work, it is his first novel which will likely remain the most known outside Argentina.

Originally published in Sur magazine in 1948, it received a great deal of attention from Nobel prize laureates Alfred Camus and Thomas Mann and was almost immediately picked up for translation by French publishing house Gallimard. The first English translation in 1950 was superseded by a 1988 translation and the release of ‘The tunnel’ as a Penguin Classic only two days before Sabato’s death last year will likely secure its place for some time as the most-widely read of all his novels.

The opening lines from 'El Túnel' displayed outside Casa Museo Ernesto Sabato (Photo: Kate Bowen)

Covering little more than 100 pages, ‘El túnel’ takes us on a discomforting journey into the mind of a convicted killer – the painter Juan Pablo Castel. Imprisoned for the murder of his lover Maria Iribarne, the novel begins with his confession and continues by explaining the circumstances of his crime.

Narrated entirely in the first person, the scene is set entirely within Castel’s conscience. Never stepping for a moment outside of his self absorbed and over-analytical mind, we are carried down every dark hallway of his paranoid imagination, charting the growth of every obsessive thought.

Whilst some praise Sabato’s approach for accurately presenting the complexities of a crazed mind, others have criticised him for painting his protagonist with too broad a stroke. Nonetheless, the novel succeeds in raising questions about logical understanding and rationality – is our killer insane, or quite the opposite?

Though the reader may never be intended to achieve empathy, he does achieve, in some terrifying way, an understanding of his subject. Throughout the novel he is asked to continually shift his stance until it rests somewhere between sympathy and abhorrence.

Since the opening lines of the novel grab the readers attention so firmly, Sabato sets himself the challenge of continuing a novel where the outcome is already known and the element of intrigue is lacking. While this does demand a certain tolerance from the reader, Sabato steers clear of tedium with an energy and a darkness that could only have been maintained successfully in such a short novel.

Opinion remains divided, however. Some argue that Sabato’s stab at the existentialist genre amounts to nothing more than an un-engaging retrospective that fails to reveal much about the human condition. For others, it is a novel well deserving of its place among the likes of Camus’ ‘The stranger’, Franz Kafka’s ‘The trial’ and George Orwell’s ‘Nineteen eighty-four’ on a shelf of existentialist classics.

Many crime novels have since offered slices of insight into their killer’s minds but, at the time, Sabato’s edgy existentialism followed a genuinely innovative European wave and represented the height of originality in Argentine writing.

Political Poles

Though Sabato may always be remembered as a tireless campaigner for justice and human rights he has also come under occasional fire for his changing political positions. Where the likes of Leopoldo Lugones and Leopoldo Marechal made themselves unpopular with their political views, Borges and Sabato managed to swing their political stances relatively easily and relatively unnoticed.

Journalist Osvaldo Bayer, however, accused him of forming part of the “Argentine hypocrisy” in light of his actions and apparently contradictory statements made during the Argentine dictatorship of 1976- 1983.

Sabato was characterised by his thick framed glasses, bald head and moustache

Critical of the government of Juan Domingo Perón, Sabato originally appeared welcoming of the military dictatorship that began in 1976 and lasted until 1983. In the same year, both he and Borges attended a dinner held by the military leader Jorge Rafael Videla, after which Sabato was recorded as commenting that Videla was a “cultured” man. Several years later he explained to a German magazine that the majority of Argentines had welcomed the military power because they’d been able to put an end to the leftist groups threatening the stability of the country.

At the end of the dictatorship, newly elected president Raúl Alfonsín appointed Sabato to preside over the National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (CONADEP) – a newly created commission tasked with investigating the fate of tens of thousands of Argentines who disappeared at the hands of the military.

Sabato presented his findings to Alfonsín on the 20 September 1984. His 50,000 page report entitled ‘Nunca más’ was later used to prosecute nine members of the military establishment for crimes committed during the dictatorship years.

Despite whatever he may have said before, it is the undeniably good work he performed as president of CONADEP that has stayed in the memory of Argentines and resulted in Sabato’s non-literary legacy being shaped to appear as significant as his literary one.

Leopoldo Marechal is a second-time-around success story; an author acknowledged only retrospectively as one of the most significant names in Argentine writing.

Following on from Jorge Luis Borges, Oliverio Girondo, Adolfo Bioy Casares and Silvina Ocampo, the Beyond Borges series looks at the prolific poet, occasional playwright, essayist and novelist whose unpopular political stance resulted in his most accomplished writing being deliberately overlooked for decades.

Rediscovered by later generations, his full-length novel ‘Adán Buenosayres’ was one of the first Spanish language texts to have be deeply indebted to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’, and is today considered one of the pioneering, must-read works in Argentine literature.

Leopoldo Marechal in Buenos Aires

Life and Early Work

Marechal was born in Buenos Aires in 1900; the eldest son in a family of French-Uruguayan and Basque-Argentine descent. He received a modest upbringing in a southern suburb of Buenos Aires and, from the age of ten, spent regular holidays with his uncle in Maipu. These early experiences provided an exposure to rural environments that would influence and specifically feature in much of his writing.

Having already begun the “dangerous habit” of counting syllables with his fingers, he wrote his first poems aged only 12. At 18, and only shortly after the death of his uncle, he suffered the loss of his father – an event that pushed him into a teaching career he would maintain for much of his life.

During the 1920s Marechal became actively involved in the avant-garde journals ‘Proa’ and ‘Martin Fierro’, along with the likes of Macedonio Fernández, Girondo and Borges. Amidst this climate of literary fervour he published his first collection of poetry in 1922.

‘Los aguiluchos’ bore echoes of earlier modernist influences while a second collection, ‘Días como flechas’, was published only four years later but adhered more closely to the avant-garde trends of the time. Though both titles revealed the same influence of nature and expression of passion, the latter demonstrated more of the finely tuned elements that framed it well within the reformist movements of the period.

In 1926 Marechal travelled to Europe where he wrote for several Spanish journals and surrounded himself with the artists and sculptors of the ‘Paris group’. He returned briefly to Argentina but, in 1929, returned to Paris where he completed his third book, ‘Odas para el hombre y la muter’. Marking something of a return to classical forms, the book received recognition in Argentina in the form of the prestigious Premio Municipal de Poesia.

An article by Marechal in the magazine Martin Fierro

As the 30s came around, the writers of the influential Florida group began moving away from the avant-garde, signifying an era of aesthetic conversion that witnessed many about-turns and relinquished ideals.

Marechal went on to publish several further books of poetry and won the Premio Municipal de Poesia a second time in 1940 for his book ‘Sonetos a Sophia’. By the end of the decade he seemed well on track to become one of Argentina’s most accomplished poets, had his political opinions not impinged so badly on his future literary success.

Adán Buenosayres

Despite being the author of three novels, almost 50 years of poetry and several plays and essays, ‘Adán Buenosayres’ is the single novel for which Marechal is now most known. Far longer than many of the celebrated Argentine novels before it, the 1948 edition covered 741 pages and was divided into seven books.

Purposefully named after Adam in a biblical sense, the Adam of Marechal’s novel also happens to be Argentine, and porteño, Parts one to five take place over three days and narrate the adventures of the principal character, while the sixth and seventh books make use of a more intimate first person; the sixth serving as Adán’s autobiography, and the seventh describing his symbolic descent into hell. Since the novel’s prologue informs us of his fate, Adán’s status as a mythical character is almost immediately secured from the offset.

As much poetry as it is prose, and as autobiographical as it is fictional, the mood of Marechal’s classic is one of its most noteworthy aspects. Its sarcastic and mocking spirit goes some way in tempering the melancholy sentiment of the story itself, and a linguistic richness accompanies its enormous flow of images and symbolism. Often compared to James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ the novel aspired to do for Buenos Aires, and for the variations of the Spanish language, what Joyce’s novel had done for Dublin.

Marechal's urban novel aspired to do for Buenos Aires what Joyce's 'Ulysses' had done for Dublin (Photo: Kate Bowen)

Rejection and Rediscovery

Had Marechal published his novel ‘Adán Buenosayres’ shortly after he’d begun writing it in Paris in 1930, its success story might have looked different. As it was, by the time the novel was published in 1948, its reception was marred by a general reluctance to detach the work from the political position of its writer.

A century earlier, the controversial ideologies of Domingo Faustino Sarmiento had likely succeeded in garnering more public attention for his historical essay ‘Facundo’, but Marechal’s masterpiece paid dearly for its author’s political allegiances.

Having initially aligned himself with a generally accepted trend of catholic nationalism, the author later declared his allegiances to the government of Juan Domingo Perón – a move that resulted in his work being shunned by his contemporaries for almost two decades.

Although his writing was not directly political, from 1945 there was no going back. Marechal would become known as the Peronist of his generation and, as such, his work would be purposefully overlooked until new political winds took flight.

Besides the favourable opinion of a select few writers and the ardent admiration of  Julio Cortázar, the first publication of Adán Buenosayres slipped into oblivion. Its reissue, almost 20 years later, caught the attention of a younger generation whose historical interest in Argentine literature led to the novel’s resurgence and its current recognition as a pioneering work in Argentine writing.

The novel has since been translated to French in 1995, Italian in 2010 and is currently being translated into English for publication this year.

Adolfo Bioy Casares, Jorge Luis Borges and Victoria Ocampo are all names you’d likely come across before arriving at the writing of the next author in our Beyond Borges series.

Perhaps better known for being the wife of the former, or the younger and less-famous sibling of the latter, Silvina Ocampo was herself a prolific writer who gained independent recognition as the author of several prize-winning poetry collections and compilations of fantastic fiction.

Portrait of Silvina Ocampo

Know Your Ocampos

Born in Buenos Aires in 1903, Silvina was the youngest of six sisters to bear the already influential family name. Not initially literary-inclined, she originally travelled to Paris to work under the direction of artists such as the Italian surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico and the French forerunner to pop art, Fernand Léger.

In the early 30s, her eldest sister Victoria became the founding editor of the long-running, culturally-significant journal ‘Sur’. It was through this review that, in 1933, Silvina was introduced to both Borges and a much younger Bioy Casares. Despite an age difference of nine years, she controversially became Bioy’s lover when he was just 19. Seven years later, they embarked on a marriage that, although not always faithful, saw them joined as occasional collaborators and lifelong companions.

As a poet, short-story author, translator and one-time playwright, Ocampo wrote incessantly and almost always independently throughout her life, publishing as many as seven poetry collections and around the same number of short story compilations.

In 1940 she collaborated with both Bioy and Borges on an anthology of fantastic literature and later an anthology of Argentine poetry. Although she had already published her first collection of short fiction, ‘Viaje olvidado’, in 1937, critics cite her involvement in this first anthology as having had a visible influence on her style.

Her later collections, including ‘Autobiografía de Irene’, ‘La furia y otro cuentos’, ‘Las invitadas’, ‘Los días de la noche’, and the children’s story ‘La naranja maravillosa’, perhaps exhibit a more prototypical Ocampo.

Writing the Feminine into the Fantastic

Inspired by authors such as Lewis Carroll, the majority of Ocampo’s literary output falls into the category of the fantastic, exploring surrealist ideas such as the manipulation of space and time, memory, mirrors and metamorphosis.

Whilst many of her themes crossed over with those explored by other authors or the fantastic, Ocampo’s treatment of what might have essentially been the same ideas, has been noted for its ingenuity and, perhaps most commonly, for its unusual cruelty.

The murders and other violent acts contained in her writing might not have met with descriptions of such ‘cruel innocence’ had the majority of her stories not presented them through the eyes of children.

Whether written for children or adults, her fiction often featured child protagonists in the recurrent setting of childhood homes and plots that appeared fairy-tale, at least in concept, if not in execution.

Many of Ocampo's stories were set in the childhood mansions of her protagonists. (This still, courtesy of 'Cornelia at her Mirror')

In ‘Biografia de Irene’ a marble statue of a winged horse speaks to a girl and promises to carry her into a fairytale land, and in ‘La torre sin fin’ a boy who makes fun of an artist who visits his house to display his paintings of a strange topless tower finds himself suddenly imprisoned there inside the painting, and although everything he paints comes to life it does not always take on the form he imagined.

Argentine author Julio Cortázar, whose own short stories run in a similar vein to Ocampo’s, commented upon the ‘strangeness of the everyday’ in her writing and her ability to infuse every day objects with a fantastic importance. Certainly, the disquieting nature of her short stories probably does stem from the fact that she wrote about such familiar every day circumstances the reader comes to doubt the occurrence of anything extraordinary.

Often written about alongside another Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, critics have suggested that an understanding of each writer’s attitude to childhood is fundamental to an appreciation of their work.

Claiming that female authors have historically leant towards the fantastic as a form of expression, some critics have also suggested Ocampo’s fantastic literature might have been a manifestation of feminine subversion, citing her treatment of metamorphosis by way of example.

Interestingly, her protagonists can be generally observed as responding differently to both the process of transformation and their new form, dependent on gender. Ocampo’s male characters are often reluctantly transformed to plants, whereas her female protagonists more often than not have an existing relationship with the object of their transformation appearing more welcoming of their transformation to either animal forms or objects that are essentially masculine.

Where her husband had prioritised plot over character, Ocampo favoured style above all else, tackling themes of love and infidelity or sin and forgiveness with an irony, dark humour and  lightness that otherwise might not have existed.

Later Life and Recognition

A poster for the 2010 film 'Cornelia at her Mirror', inspired by OCampo's last book of fantastic fiction

Besides authoring some of the most original and ingenious short fiction Argentina had seen between 1937 and 1988, Ocampo was also highly-regarded as a poet, publishing her first collection of poems, ‘Enumeracio de la patria’, in 1942, and her last, ‘Amarillo celeste’, in 1972. In the middle she was awarded the 1954 Premio Municipal de Literatura for ‘Espacios métricos’ and the 1962 Premio Nacional de Poesia for ‘Lo amargo por dulce’, having won second prize for ‘Los nombres’ nine years earlier in 1953.

In later life she reportedly suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, which seems especially cruel for a writer who had explored the theme of memory in such depth in her work. In her first book ‘Viaje olvidado’ a girl looks to remember the moment of her birth, and in a later story a woman recounts her life story backwards, beginning with the present and eventually dying when she reaches the beginning.

Bioy withheld news of his wife’s own death in 1993 so that a private funeral could be held in accordance with her wishes. Having been associated for more than 50 years with prominent literary and artistic personalities, Ocampo is often described as having lived in the shadow of her sister on the one hand and her husband on the other.

Perhaps content to live as a ‘famous unknown’, some argue that Ocampo was not necessarily subjected to living under these shadows but rather chose to remain there, shying away from the public life that Buenos Aires demanded of its great authors.

Although her sister Victoria probably still stands to be the most talked-about of the Ocampo siblings, Silvina’s impressive literary production at least equals that of her husband Bioy in terms of quantity and possibly even far exceeds him in terms of quality, linguistic ability and influence.

As recognition of Ocampo’s contribution to fantastic literature continues to grow, her influence on other surrealist authors is also becoming more recognisable. Whilst she might always be comparatively unknown, critics acknowledge the value of her writing as a jumping-off point for the works of Borges, Cortázar and other more-recognised masters of the short-story form.

A collaborator of Jorge Luis Borges’ and the husband of poet and short-story writer Silvina Ocampo, the next author in our Beyond Borges series is recognised as one of the most innovative and imaginative names in Argentine writing.

Most known for his brief but resounding novel ‘La invención de Morel’, Adolfo Bioy Casares left an indelible impression on Latin American literature, reflected by the array of prestigious prizes and international honours he was awarded during his lifetime.

Adolfo Bioy Casares was honoured with international awards throughout his life

Born in Buenos Aires in 1914, Bioy received a privileged upbringing as the only child of an aristocratic family. His first work of fiction was published and personally financed by his father and, encouraged in his writing, he went on to become a regular contributor of the literary review, ‘Sur’.

It was through the magazine’s founding editor, Victoria Ocampo, that an 18-year old Bioy would be introduced to an already influential Borges. With 15 years between them, a friendship emerged that, over the course of their lifetimes, saw them collaborating on various screenplays and anthologies of gauchesque poetry, Argentine poetry and fantastic literature.

Interestingly, if Borges had shunned the influence of his older mentor Macedonio Fernández, he seemed content to share the spotlight with Bioy throughout his life, making efforts to secure for him the same recognition and acclaim he had garnered for himself.

In 1936 they founded their own short-lived review, ‘Destiempo’, and later, under the collective pseudonyms H. Bustos Domecqe, B. Lynch Davis, and B. Suárez Lynch, published a series of satirical sketches and detective stories.

But it was with his own name, and one short but impressive novel in particular, that Bioy would leave his lasting mark as an author.

The Invention of Morel

In his prologue to Bioy’s 1940 novella, ‘La invención de Morel’, Borges can be seen as campaigning on behalf of the 26-year old writer, foreseeing potential criticism of the work and setting out a watertight defence of both the novel and the genre before it had even begun. But, described by both Borges and the Mexican author Octavio Paz as “perfect”, it seems likely that the novel would have stood up alone.

The 1940 cover of 'La Invención de Morel'

Prioritising a well-developed plot over character, it tells the story of a fugitive surviving on a remote island in the Indian Ocean. When the narrator’s solitude is disturbed by the arrival of a group of visitors, he finds himself falling in love with a beautiful woman who he calls Faustine. Unfortunately, his attempts to win Faustine’s affections are fruitless, since she and the other visitors are merely projections of a holographic machine invented by Morel.

Seamlessly constructed, the novel reveals its author to be a meticulous stylist, and suffers from neither from the chaotic influence of surrealism or from the techniques of automatic writing that marred his early work. Characterised by concise sentences, it showcases Bioy’s less is more style that is said to have pushed Borges himself towards a leaner prose.

Introducing elements of mystery, science fiction, horror, and romance, ‘La invención de Morel’ emerges as an immaculate and accomplished text. Bioy himself considered it his first satisfactory work, saying: “I understand that something is wrong with my way of writing, and I tell myself it’s time to do something about it. For reasons of caution, in writing the new novel, I don’t strive to make a big hit, just to avoid errors.”

In doing so, he created a novel that required readers to patiently suspend their disbelief. Only at the end, does he reveal an explanation that not only expands the scope for interpreting the novel, but makes everything that came before appear essential and carefully planned.

With no superfluity in either plot or language, ‘La invención de Morel’ imports necessary references and subtle clues that can only be appreciated on a second read.

The Reinvention of Adventure

Stemming from the rigid logic that underlines their work, critics have drawn comparison between Bioy and the Czech master of literature, Franz Kafka. Though Kafka often favoured the third person narrative, Bioy heightened the reader’s sense of discovery by telling his stories through diary notes, letters and documents left behind by his protagonists.

Though he wrote and published consistently until his death in 1999, ‘La invención de Morel’ will always remain the most remarkable for its revitalisation of the adventure genre and the truly original concepts it introduced.

A video still from an art installation by Meredith James in 2010

Described by the Chilean author Roberto Bolaño as “the first and the best fantastic novel in Latin America” it has inspired a steady stream of films, including Alain Resnais’ ‘Last Year at Marienbad’, Argentine director Eliseo Subiela’s ‘Hombre mirando al sudeste’, and most recently, the story lines of the US television series ‘Lost’.

Although the former made efforts to deny its Latin influences, Subiela’s film was proud to affiliate itself the Argentine classic and featured a scene where a passage from the book was read. Producers of ‘Lost’ only hinted at the inspiration for their storyline by showing a principle character named Sawyer reading the book – a small gesture which had dramatic effect on the sales of the New York Review Book’s English language translation.

Widely acknowledged as an innovative and original writer and the author of an Argentine masterpiece, Adolfo Bioy Casares was awarded various literary honours inside Argentina abroad. Among others he received the Mondello Prize for best foreign writer in Italy in 1984, an international prize from the Latin American Institute of Rome in 1986, a Miguel de Cervantes prize in Spain in 1991, the Alfonso Reyes prize for Latin American letters in Mexico in 1991, and the Roger Caillois prize awarded to him in France in 1995.

Awaiting the author Luisa Valenzuela in her Belgrano home, I sip my coffee as a number of eccentric artists come and go, eager to discuss a host of wild and wonderful ideas.

Luisa Valenzuela self-portrait.

The raven-haired Valenzuela emerges twenty minutes later, summoning me into her haven-like study. The cerulean room is flanked by rows of books, and an impressive collection of masks, procured over years of extensive travelling.

Valenzuela grew up under the aegis of her mother, herself a prominent Argentine writer named Luisa Mercedes Levinson. The Levinson household served as a literary salon, frequented by some of the great literary names of the twentieth century including Jorge Luis Borges, Ernesto Sábato and Julio Cortázar.

Despite publishing her first story, ‘Ese canto’ at the tender age of 21, Valenzuela was not initially drawn to a literary career. It wasn’t until the 1960s, when she took a post at La Nación under the direction of the eminent literary critic Ambrosio Vecino, that she discovered her own writerly vocation.

I’ve come to discuss Valenzuela’s most recent publication, ‘Cuidado con el tigre’, the latest novel in a prodigious collection. Originally written in the 1960s, the novel was withdrawn from publication due to Valenzuela’s concern that it would be misinterpreted as advocating a radical political agenda.

Having come full circle in her literary trajectory, Luisa now feels that her work would be incomplete without the ‘missing link’ of ‘Cuidado’ which, she says, lay the groundwork for her subsequent, more convoluted, explorations of the the use and abuse of power.

Set in the tail end of a decade marked by the fall of Che Guevara, ‘Cuidado’ traces the farcical ins and outs of an Argentine revolutionary cell. More ‘ideological’ than political, the group’s radical antics only lightly veil more complex power structures, played out through the sexual entanglements of its overly zealous members.

Alfredo Navoni, the tiger alluded to in the title, is a man of action committed to the cause. A recurrent figure in Valenzuela’s work – he will resurface again in her later novels, ‘Como en la guerra’ and ‘Cola de lagartija’.

Navoni has friends in high revolutionary places, most notably, the mysterious ‘migrator’, so-named for his relentless travels to border countries. Here we encounter him in the midst of coordinating a rainforest mission, accompanied by the contrary sisters, Emanuela and Amelia, as well as a host of other tangential characters.

As captain of the organisation and a commanding figure, Emanuela strives to direct the mission on a level playing field with her male counterparts, whilst Amelia seeks refuge in domesticity, pandering to the tiger’s every whim. As for Navoni, detached and phlegmatic as any revolutionary caricature, he spends his time hopping between the sisters’ beds.

Amidst this host of idealists, the underground writer Artigueta is the only affiliate able to reflect on the contradictions inherent in striving to advance a political ideal, uncontaminated by emotional ties.

Written before her narrative experiments of the 1970s, ‘Cuidado’ relies on intersecting narrative strands and an impersonal prose style, commensurate with the seemingly objective mission of its protagonists.

Where Valenzuela’s later work is allusive in structure, addressing the violence and paranoia that was endemic under the last dictatorship, this early work tackles political activism head on, albeit with a heavily ironic slant.

In the face of Borges’ ‘art for art’s sake’ mandate, which prevailed in Argentine literature for the most part of the twentieth century, Valenzuela feared her political farce would have been considered anathema to literary prestige. Four decades later, its political resonances have attenuated somewhat, lending it a historic, retrospective dimension.

In her afterword to the novel, she describes how the tiger was obscured by another, less contextual but more striking feline creation, ‘El gato eficaz’. The novel, a series of literary and erotic vignettes of New York, was published in 1972.

The prelude of a ten-year stint in the US, Luisa says it was the “brutal” streets of New York that unleashed an unexpected upsurge of creativity in her, leading her down literary avenues she had not previously contemplated. At the same time, the city served as a place of refuge in the face of the mounting political turmoil and censorship back home.

In 2000, New Yorks’ Whitney Museum exhibited Valenzuela’s short story collection, ‘Aquí pasan cosas raras’, as part of its century overview of the evolution of American arts. Alongside the likes of Susan Sontag, Valenzuela was hailed as a defining writer of the 1970s, and was the only Latin American author to be granted such a prestigious entitlement.

If Valenzuela has firmly carved out a niche for herself in the US arts scene, her work has always assumed a more ambivalent position in relation to Argentine literary tradition. While her prose continues to address national issues, stylistically she has a stronger claim to a more generic Latin American heritage. She accounts her linguistic playfulness and dark humour to the years she spent among contemporary Latin American writers at the universities of Columbia, NYU and Iowa in 1970s.

Although she still publishes articles in the international press, Valenzuela ultimately leans towards fiction. “Sticking to facts, however pertinent,” she says, “doesn’t allow you to delve into metaphor, to understand the deeper implications. Fiction knows better than we do.”

Our meeting comes to a premature close – Valenzuela has to pack her bags since she’s jetting off to a mask festival in Sardinia tomorrow morning. Though she assures me she won’t be turning her hand to new fiction in the near future, masks, both concrete and metaphorical, are to be the subject of her next literary undertaking.

Having begun with the poet Esteban Echeverría and journeyed through such influential authors as José Hernández, Leopoldo Lugones and Roberto Arlt, The Argentina Independent’s Beyond Borges series arrives at its namesake.

Born in the city of Buenos Aires in 1899, poet, short story author, essayist, translator and critic Jorge Luis Borges went on to become not only the most recognisable name, but also the most recognisable face, in Argentine writing.

Widely acknowledged during his lifetime as a master of 20th century literature, a large proportion of local literary pride can be attributed to Borges’ extensive back catalogue. His impact on literature is remarkable, not only in terms of his contribution to Argentine writing but also his far-reaching and profound influence on literature worldwide.

Arguably Argentina’s finest export and commonly held up as a poster boy of its national literature; the relationship between the country and its most famous author seems, in true Borges fashion, to be both reciprocal and eternal.

Jorge Luis Borges, commonly used as a poster boy for national literature

Early Influences

Raised in a middle class family home, Borges grew up surrounded by the dizzying heights of his father’s multi-lingual library. Harbouring literary aspirations of his own, Jorge Guillermo Borges had never succeeded in becoming an author, but his young son seemed destined to become a prolific figure.

With English as his first language, Borges had made an active decision to embark on a literary career from a young age. His translation of Oscar Wilde’s ‘The Happy Prince’ was printed in an Argentine newspaper when he was only nine years old.

In 1914, his family moved from Argentina to Europe and settled in Switzerland until the end of the war. Home-schooled until age 11, this period of stability afforded Borges an opportunity to complete an institutional education. Following his graduation from the College of Geneva in 1918, the family lived in several European countries, spending time in the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Seville and Madrid.

It was in Spain that Borges fell in with ultraism- an avant-garde movement that had grown up in response to the modernism that dominated Spanish poetry. Having already published book reviews for newspapers in Geneva, he became a regular contributor to Spain’s literary press. In 1921, he returned to Buenos Aires, bringing with him the fresh ideas of ultraism.

The Face of Argentine Literature

Borges’ first poetry collection, ‘Fervour de Buenos Aires’, was published only two years after his return to the city, but it was his page presence in local reviews and journals that really launched his literary career in Argentina.

Already established as a central figure in a circle of vanguard authors, Borges became a regular contributor to the avant-garde magazine ‘Martin Fierro’ and a cofounder of several others, including ‘Proa’ and a broadsheet journal named ‘Prism’. Though he would later denounce both the avant-garde and ultraism, his involvement in these publications provided a valuable platform for his work and played an important part in increasing his public profile.

Graphic design inspired by Borges (Courtesy of Gregory Peterson)

Much of the writing collected under the 1936 title ‘Historia universal de la infamia’ had been previously published inside the literary supplement of Crítica, where Borges had assumed an editorial role in 1933.

In addition, several of the short stories contained the 1941 novel ‘El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan’, had also appeared inside Victoria Ocampo’s ‘Sur’ magazine as early as 1931. It was with this collection of stories that Borges arguably invented the concept of a hypertext novel, preceding both Julio Cortázar and Macedonio Fernández.

In his earlier writing he had experimented with using fictional techniques to tell what were essentially true stories and became the first author to create elaborate reviews of imaginary works. This playful approach extended to publishing, where collaborations under pseudonyms and frequent experimentations with literary forgery resulted in occasional false accreditations.

In basing much of his writing in his home city of Buenos Aires, Borges was adopted as a figurehead of criollismo, a Latin American movement that had its counterpart in North America’s regionalism.

But whilst he had built up a huge body of work based on Argentine culture and history, his themes were generally more universal. During the 1930s he began exploring existentialist ideas in line with increasing public interest, but it was following his father’s death and a near fatal accident of his own, that Borges’ imagination grew progressively fertile.

Argentina’s Finest Export

Among Borges’ best-known works are ‘Ficciones’ in 1944 and ‘The Aleph’ in 1949; two short story collections famed for their complex philosophical concepts. Interconnected by themes of infinity and time, dreams, mirrors, labyrinths, and religion, the stories play on a mix of fantasy and reality and are credited with marking the beginnings of magic realism.

Reacting against the realism of 19th century literature, magic realism gained popularity during the 1960s, when Latin American literature experienced a worldwide “boom”. Until this time, Borges remained little known outside Argentina and, although he preceded Cortázar and the other authors of the boom period, he undoubtedly benefitted from the exposure it provided.

Already a public figure in Argentina, Borges was appointed president of the Argentine Society of Writers, professor of English and American Literature at the Argentine Association of English Culture and was, for some time, director of the National Library.

Argentina's most famous author continues to inspire international discussion (Photo courtesy of Casa de América)

Receipt of the International Prize in 1961, awarded jointly to Borges and Samuel Beckett, projected him into an international arena and spurred overseas interest in his work for the first time.

His elevated profile enabled him to embark on a prolific lecturing career whereby he lectured extensively on the art of translation. Having himself translated the work of Franz Kafka, Edgar Allen Poe, Rudyard Kipling and William Faulkner, his stance was both new and controversial, declaring translations that contradicted or improved the original to be “equally valid”.

A succession of esteemed literary awards honoured Borges’ work both retrospectively and continuously. Having received the Jerusalem Prize in 1971, the Cervantes Prize in 1979, a Balzan Prize in 1980, and a French Legion of Honour awarded only three years before his death, some say he was systematically overlooked for the Nobel Prize in literature. “Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition,” he said. “Since I was born they have not been granting it to me.”

Still, the impact of Jorge Luis Borges on Argentine literature and literature in general cannot be underestimated. Often described as the most important Spanish language writer since Cervantes, he has been credited as an author who renovated Argentine fiction, paving the way for a remarkable generation of Spanish language writers and turning ‘Borges’ into a household name.

Frances Haslam, The English grandmother of Borges (Photo courtesy of Martin Hadis)

“My destiny has always been a literary destiny,” Jorge Luis Borges once stated. “This is the heritage that I received. When I was a child it was always understood that I had to become a writer; that I had to fulfill the literary destiny that had been denied to my forefathers.”

My recent book, ‘Literatos y Excétricos: Los Ancestors Ingleses de Jorge Luis Borges’, shows that Borges’s literary heritage is vastly more ancient than anyone, even Borges himself, had imagined.

Borges’s intellectual and literary inclinations can be traced back to 18th century England—to a forgotten clan of writers and publishers from whom Borges descended, and to the importance that John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, placed on books and knowledge as sources of enlightenment for the both the populace and the elite.

Sources of a literary vocation

That Borges is one of the classic authors of the 20th century is now beyond argument. Stories and poems authored by Borges are studied at Oxford and Yale; his plots have been dissected by dozens of critics; and titles dealing with his biography as well as the most minute and arcane details of his creations number in the tall hundreds.

Where did his literary inspiration spring from?

“If I were asked to name the chief event in my life,” Borges once wrote, “I should say my father’s library.”

“In fact,” he added, “I sometimes think that I have never strayed outside the library.”

Borges poetic inspiration can be also traced back to this paternal influence.

“It was [my father] who revealed the power of poetry to me – the fact that words are not only a means of communication but also magic symbols and music. When I recite poetry in English now, my mother tells me I take on his every voice.”

What remains unknown, however, is whether it was just one generation that formed Borges’s passion. If Argentina’s most famous writer acquired his literary inclination from his father, then where did his father acquire it in turn? What were the true sources of Borges as a literary phenomenon?

The household in which Borges’s father was raised offers a clue.

Jorge Guillermo Borges was the son of Colonel Francisco Borges Lafinur, a respected military man, and Frances Anne Haslam, a cultivated English woman.

But barely a few months after Jorge Guillermo Borges’s birth on 24th February 1874, Colonel Borges was fatally wounded in combat.

Frances Haslam first tried to make a writer of Jorge Guillermo. But when the latter went blind, the grandmother instead passed the mandate on to her grandson: Jorge Luis Borges.

The Haslams

Frances Haslam was born in Staffordshire. She was the daughter of a man of letters, Edward Young Haslam, and the granddaughter of a Methodist priest, Reverend William Haslam.

The region from where the Haslams came from - known as "The Potteries" (Photo courtesy of Martin Hadis)

Beyond this, Borges’s own knowledge of his British ancestors was vague at best.

Birth, marriage and death certificates helped me construct the history of the lineage that had led to Borges’s literary success.

Slowly, an image of a literary family began to emerge.

The Haslams were a clan full of intellectuals founded by a Methodist preacher who, seen through the eyes of his contemporaries, bared an uncanny resemblance to the literary master that his family spawned almost 150 years later.

Biographies and obituaries that no one had associated with this family in the last two centuries revealed Reverend Haslam, Borges’s great-great grandfather “cherished the love of books and retirement, and he often strolled into the fields to indulge in lonely musings of the words of God”.

Reverend Haslam married and had six sons and daughters which together formed quite a colourful clan:

Joseph Barnard Davis (Photo courtesy of Martin Hadis)

Elizabeth Haslam, born in 1792 married Joseph Barnard Davis, a craniologist whose home housed a collection of 1,700 skulls. Dr Davis was the author of two important books, ‘Thesaurus Craniorum’ and

‘Crania Britannica: Delineations and Descriptions of the Skulls of the Aboriginal and early inhabitants of the British Island’. Charles Darwin himself was in touch with this peculiar ancestor of Borges, and sent Dr. Davis two copies on his paper on natural selection.

Marianne Haslam, born in 1799, a prolific writer and her ‘Mother’s Practical Guide’ to the physical, intellectual and moral training of her children became a later 19th century bestseller. Marianne’s husband, John Bakewell, was also a Methodist preacher and an author on religion. Mr Bakewell became a book steward in the Methodist movement.

John Bakewell’s father, Mr. Thomas Bakewell, a ‘mad doctor’ who founded a lunatic asylum and wrote a book entitled ‘Domestic Guide for Cases of Insanity’.

John Buckley Haslam, born in 1794, a teacher, was killed in mysterious circumstances in Baltimore, Maryland.Despite having survived the attack for two days, this great-grand-uncle of Borges refused to identify his attackers, taking their identity with him to his grave. His 1837 obituary is aptly titled ‘Mystery’.

William C. Haslam (Jr), born in 1796, a teacher and schoolmaster, married Mary Eleanora Allbut, herself descended from a clan of printers and publishers, the Allbuts, some of whom were in turn personally acquainted with the Brönte sisters.

Samuel Thomas, born in 1805, died young.

Edward Young Haslam, born in 1808, Borges’s great-great grandfather and father of Frances Haslam. The youngest son of Reverend Haslam carried the name of a then-illusionist but now-forgotten 18^th century poet. Searches in the archives showed his attempt at a doctoral dissertation, and a number of newspaper articles covering a wide range of topics.

It’s sort of ironic that a literary genius did not know about the literary history of his ancestors. Perhaps unconsciously the words of Mr Wesley, the founder of Methodism, were flowing through his veins as he wrote: “My people shall be a reading people.”