Historia Universal de la Infamia / A Universal History of Infamy

A veces creo que los buenos lectores son cisnes aun más tenebrosos y singulares que los buenos autores. --Jorge Luis Borges nEn su primer libro de ficción, Borges trabaja con biografías de ladrones y rufianes verdaderos; personajes traidores y a veces también heroicos. Aquí están, entre otros, Lazarus Morell, redentor de esclavos; el impostor Tom Castro, hijo perdido y encontrado; y la viuda y pirata Ching, hábil en el saqueo de altamar. A estos le siguen Hombre de la esquina rosada, uno de sus relatos más celebrados; y Etcétera, un testimonio de sus incontables lecturas. Relatos que juegan a falsear y alterar historias ajenas, infundidos con el puro placer de contar cuentos, Historia universal de la infamia anunció la llegada de una voz literaria totalmente original. n nNo hay nadie como Borges. --The New York Times n nENGLISH DESCRIPTION n nA Universal History of Infamy, the first of Borges' four volumes of short stories, was originally published in an Argentine newspaper of the 1930s. As well as chronicling the lives of famous or little-known villains, Borges perpetrates a literary hoax or two, a technique for which he later won acclaim. The collection also includes the popular 'Streetcorner Man', Borges' earliest short story. n nThe volume was conceived by Borges to be no more than light entertainment. Yet after it appeared in 1935 its influences on the fiction of Latin America was so profound that its publication date bcame a landmark in the history of Latin American literature. n nI love his work because every one of his pieces contains a model of the universe or an attribute of the universe . . . because his stories often take the outer form of some genre from popular literature, a form proved by long usage, which creates almost mythical structures. -Italo Calvinon