“Borges” and Skármeta in Paris

Abstract

 Antonio Skarmeta’s short story “Borges” is an unsettling parable of the relation that contemporary young writers have with the authority not only of a great canonical author such as Borges, but also with a city, Paris, and a language, French. The tradition in which this story inscribes itself extends in the past back to Sarmiento’s trip to France and in the present to other of Skarmeta’s short stories and novels.