To discuss and recommend authors and books from the 20th century in general.
A few great modern authors that come to mind and who’s works I’m quite familiarized are Albert Camus, Vladimir Nabokov, F Scott Fitzgerald, Jorge Luis Borges and even though they are still alive and publishing Mario Vargas Llosa (his older works are fantastic) and Kazuo Ishiguro (haven’t read Ishiguro yet, but i have “never let me go” on my reading list)
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Jorge Luis Borges is relatively obscure in the english speaking world. For those who don’t know him, he was a super based argentine author and poet. I speak spanish (quite similar to portuguese) and bought a few of his books in Buenos Aires. He never wrote any novel, his books are all tales, poems and essays. My favorite tale book was “el Aleph”.
In the 1970s he was almost awarded the Nobel, however due to his defense of Latin American military dictatorships, the swedish academy warned him that if he traveled to Pinochet’s Chile to receive an homage and being awarded and honoris causa he would not been given the Nobel. Borges told them he didn’t take bribes, and went to Chile regardless
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Is Borges obscure? I see him talked about fairly often (although almost all the conversation about literature I get is on Cambodian frog husbandry forums). Maybe he's just much, much more famous in the Spanish speaking world, but he definitely seem known to anglophones.
That is a cool story about the Nobel, though.
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Too real
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He is super famous in spanish speaking countries, and maybe obscure is not the right word, but definitely overlooked in english speaking countries when compared to other LATAM writers like Garcia Marquez and Neruda. The details of the Nobel story come from his widow, and there is some discussion about that, however it seems like the motivation was indeed political. https://www.infobae.com/cultura/2020/10/07/historia-secreta-el-dia-que-borges-le-dijo-no-al-nobel/?outputType=amp-type
This is from an argentine news outlet.
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