LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE
In this evocative work of what the author in his Afterword calls 'autofiction' or 'a kind of novelised memoir', Jay Parini takes us back fifty years, when he fled the United States for Scotland. He was in frantic flight from the Vietnam War and desperately in search of his adult life. There, through unlikely circumstances, he met famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges.

Borges was in his seventies, blind and frail. Parini was asked to look after him while his translator was unexpectedly called away. When Borges heard that Parini owned a 1957 Morris Minor, he declared a long-held wish to visit the Scottish Highlands, where he hoped to meet a man in Inverness who was interested in Anglo-Saxon riddles. As they travelled, the charmingly garrulous Borges took Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry. As Borges's world of labyrinths, mirrors and doubles shimmered into being, their escapades took a surreal turn.

Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era - like our own - in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

"For readers who already admire Borges, this memoir will be a delicious treat. For those who have yet to read him, Parini provides the perfect entry point to a writer who altered the way many think of literature" - * New York Times *

"Often caper-ish and laugh-out-loud funny . . . this little jewel also brims with affection and gratitude . . . with romantic reveries, stolen lines of poetry, philosophical meanderings and charismatic/egotistical performances showcasing his vast expanse of literary and historic knowledge" - * Big Issue *

"A classic comic-philosophical road story, playfully conscious of its own traditions . . . The pressure to capture Scotland in words for the great Jorge Luis Borges forces Jay to think about language in a new way, to "up his game" as a poet, and this artistic journey, occurring alongside their physical journey, becomes the book's emotional backbone . . . A fun, tightly crafted, tender-hearted literary adventure [and] an improbable tale that, like many improbable tales, happens to be true" - * Wall Street Journal *

"Hilarious . . . Parini's book is the literary equivalent of Withnail and I - and it is odds-on that in due course it will become a much-loved film, too" - * i *

"A gem of book . . . a wonderful tribute . . . So many memoirs tend towards the sour. Borges and Me [is] sweet and flavoursome and moreish" - * Herald Scotland *

"A funny, affecting book . . . an exquisite book" - * Independent *

"[A celebration of] the abiding and metamorphic powers of memory, invention, and narrative" - * London Review of Books *