This book is a record of those seminars, which took the form of informal discussions between Borges, Norman Thomas di Giovanni--his editor and translator, Frank MacShane--then head of the writing program at Columbia, and the students. Borges's prose, poetry, and translations are handled separately and the book is divided accordingly.The prose seminar is based on a line-by-line discussion of one of Borges's most distinctive stories, "The End of the Duel." Borges explains how he wrote the story, his use of local knowledge, and his characteristic method of relating violent events in a precise and ironic way. This close analysis of his methods produces some illuminating observations on the role of the writer and the function of literature.The poetry section begins with some general remarks by Borges on the need for form and structure and moves into a revealing analysis of four of his poems. The final section, on translation, is an exciting discussion of how the art and culture of one country can be "translated" into the language of another.This book is a tribute to the brilliant craftsmanship of one of South America's--indeed, the world's--most distinguished writers and provides valuable insight into his inspiration and his method.

    He pursues the sophisticated and inaccessible Roos across Europe; falls in love with Cecilia, a carnal, compassionate hermaphrodite; and achieves a tender, erotic alliance with a woman known only by an ideogram. Avalovara is an extraordinary novel, both in its depiction of modern life and in its rigorous, puzzlelike structure visually represented by a spiral and a five-word palindrome.

    Part political allegory, the novel explores the nature of good and evil in a provincial port in northeastern Brazil during World War II––all the ills of the repressive dictatorship then in power are reflected in the corrupt and violent society of Maceió. As Ivo says: “During a dictatorship, all narratives are poorly told, since a dictatorship is the Kingdom of Lies and cannot tolerate the truth.” But to focus solely on the allegory would deny the richness of the book’s many layers, the considerable skill with which the characters emerge from the narrator’s false starts, the subtle and pervasive wit that skewers pomposity and pretension, the suspense created by the narrator’s very unreliability, and the poetry with which the exotic setting is evoked. The last word in describing such a heady mixture belongs to the author, who calls it, “a story of terror and violence that is, surely, a sunny nightmare.” Although Ledo Ivo is well known in his own country as a journalist and poetic spokesman of the “Generation of 1945,” this edition of Snakes’ Nest marks his first book-length appearance in English. Originally published in 1973 under the title Ninho de Cobras, Snakes’ Nest won the prestigious Brazilian Walmap Prize for that year. The novel has been translated by Kern Krapohl who, for several years, lived in Brazil and worked closely with the author. Jon M. Tolman of the University of New Mexico has contributed an informative introduction which clearly places the story both historically and geographically.

    Cabrera Infante, recognized as one of the most original Latin American writers. He has written novels, stories, critical essays, articles and screenplays and has lectured at universities from Cambridge to Chicago, and grew up in Cuba under the dictator Batista, knew Guevara and Fidel Castro personally and now lives in England as an exile. He is the author of Three Trapped Tigers, Infante's Inferno, Holy Smoke and View of Dawn in the Tropics.