There was a time when Latin American writers felt compelled — maybe the word is “constrained” — to focus their work on a single topic: Latin America. Jorge Luis Borges sought to change this provincial attitude. In a 1951 lecture titled “The Argentine Writer and Tradition,” he called on his colleagues to see beyond the ends of their noses. “What ought to be the themes of Argentine letters?” he asked. His answer was blunt: Western Civilization, by which he meant everything. If Shakespeare, who never left England, is celebrated for plays set in Italy and Denmark, why shouldn’t an Argentine write about a small German city in the 19th century?
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