Jorge Luis Borges

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) _ Two thieves broke into the house of Argentina's most famous living writer Ernesto Sabato, allegedly stealing a cell phone, a painting and a framed copy of the cover of his 1998 autobiography "Before the End." The daily La...

2666 A Novel Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer Farrar, Straus & Giroux: 898 pp., $30 There is an unwittingly funny passage in the Spanish edition of Ignacio Echevarría's introduction to "El Secreto del Mal," a still-...

" Synecdoche, New York," screenwriter Charlie Kaufman's wildly ambitious directorial debut, recalls the Jorge Luis Borges story in which the imperial cartographers make a map of the empire so detailed and true-to-life that it takes on the exact dimensions...

Pine forests must shudder at Ilan Stavans' very name. A scholar, fiction writer, literary critic, lexicographer, graphic novelist, public television host and all-around intellectual go-to guy on matters Judaic and Latino, the Amherst College professor...

THERE'S A fable by Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges that tells of a map so detailed, it is exactly the same size as the land it describes. This year's California Biennial might feel a bit like that map: With exhibitions, performances and public art...

Edward Anderson had a strange and sad career. He was born in Texas in 1905 and grew up in Oklahoma, serving his apprenticeship as a journalist on a small paper in Ardmore, Okla. Restless, he worked as a deckhand on a freighter, plied his fists as a...

By now, it must be apparent to all but his most credulous admirers that Francis Ford Coppola is no longer a mortal lock for delivering masterworks like "The Godfather," "Apocalypse Now" or "The Conversation." He still is capable, however, of either...

Today, Cannick and Perlstein discuss the ideological spectrum within the Democratic Party. Previously, they weighed the causes of the party's apparent national strength, assessed the compatibility of progressive politics and traditional religious values,...

In one of his many fantastical short stories, the Argentine fiction writer Jorge Luis Borges describes "a certain Chinese encyclopedia," the Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, which divides the world's animals into the following categories: 1....

By Ed Park Last fall, the Portland, Ore.-based literary journal Tin House published an issue titled "Fantastic Women," a satisfyingly plump gathering of work by what could loosely be called the new breed of fabulists. The fiction displays slipstream-...

If you want to catch two wicked talents get into trouble, head for the Fountain Theatre, where Tony winner Tonya Pinkins and "Cold Case" actress Tracie Thoms are tearing it up in "And Her Hair Went With Her," Zina Camblin's vivid if uneven look at African...

By Michael Erard ords are the most familiar part of language, because it's words we're most conscious of learning and forgetting. Only certain words, though. Your word-of-the-day calendar will never list "the" or "but." You boast about knowing French...