In store now! Borges and Me: An Encounter, by Jay Parini
Fleeing America, the Vietnam War, and especially his parents, poet and literary biographer Jay Parini relocated to Scotland for postgraduate studies. Unsure of himself, and even less sure of the quality of his poetry, he falls in with a group of radical students and strange poets. In their company, he is asked to take the legendary Argentinean author Jorge Louis Borges (author of Labyrinths, among many other iconic pieces of fiction), now blind and in his 70’s, on a trip through the Scottish Highlands. Hilarious, keenly observed, compulsively readable, and absolutely - bizarrely - true, Parini spends much of his time describing the Scottish landscape to this ageing, blind genius. A literary memoir like no other, it is both a portrait of one of literature’s most beguiling figures, a glimpse into a lost time, and a beautiful meditation on a life in the pursuit of art.
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Order your copy today directly through October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get a commission on your purchase.
Borges and Me: An Encounter by Jay Parini
Paperback £10.99
In frantic flight from the Vietnam War, Jay Parini leaves the United States for Scotland. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The pair embark on a trip to the Scottish Highlands, and on the way the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry.
Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era - like our own - in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.
Order your copy today directly from October Books or buy online through our bookshop store and we’ll get commission on your purchase.
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