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         Jorge Luis Borges’s fiction, like the tango which he celebrated and analyzed, exerted an influence far beyond the borders of his native land.

            African-American Tony-winning playwright August Wilson told me Borges was his role model. Wilson, a high school drop-out, was an autodidact whose education came from libraries and those who compare his plays with the magical realism of Borges can see the influence and how Wilson made it his own.

            A good introduction to Borges is “The Aleph and Other Stories” which are colored by supernatural and philosophical tones.  The collection also contains vignettes about personal ideology and literary imagination.

            To see how an Argentine novelist maintains the Borges influence, try Tomas Eloy Martinez’s “The Tango Singer”.  It’s not only a study of tango but a tour of Buenos Aires’ traumatic past and provocative present.

            Linda Valenzuela, one of Argentina’s most widely translated writers, uses magical realism to interpret the repressive character of masculine culture.  Apart from magical but reeking with realism is her short story “Tango”, which grows out of male/female customs on the dance floor.

            Argentine literature has proved infinitely translatable to the screen. Manuel Puig’s “The Kiss of the Spider Woman”, a contemporary horror story about Peron’s repressive prison, was made into a film and a musical.   Julio Cortazar’s short fiction includes “Blow-Up”, the mysterious story immortalized by the Antonioni film.

            When you want to turn from magical realism to just the facts, look for Rodrigo Fresson’s “The History of Argentina”, an international best-seller.