GOOGLE DID IT AGAIN : JORGE LUIS BORGES 112th BIRTHDAY

This is from telegraph.co.uk

The 112th birthday of Jorge Luis Borges, the famed Argentinian author known for his works that explored dreams and unreality, has been celebrated with a colourful Google Doodle.

Users visiting the search engine’s home page are met with a colourful montage appearing to show a maze of “magical realism”.

It shows an ageing man standing in front of a complex scenery including a large library, as he views labyrinths and staircases and “forking paths”.

When the illustration is clicked on it returns search results on the literary giant and poet who is credited with pioneering the science fiction genre.

Born in Buenos Aires on August 24, 1899, Borges was taught at home by his parents during his early years before attending school in Geneva, Switzerland.

After returning to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals.Experts believe the influential writer, who honed his literary skills writing yoghurt adverts, was ahead of his time with his writings and long before the internet or digital computers were established.

His short stories were connected by common themes including labyrinths, dreams, libraries and fictional writers.

The multi-linguist envisioned “a massive branching structure as a better way to organise data and to represent human experience”.

One of his best known books was the short story “The Library of Babel,” in which his library is so vast it is constructed of countless hexagonal galleries.

Experts also believe that his other “hypertext” works from the 1940s, such as “Ficciones”, published in 1944, and “The Aleph”, 1949, were some of his best writings. He is also known for Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings,

Many believe he became a myth in his own lifetime for his “mythic riddlings”.

"I am not sure that I exist, actually,” he once said.

“I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities that I have visited, all my ancestors."

Several of his short stories have been turned into feature films, including the 1996 film Death and the Compass.

He died in Geneva aged 86 on June 14, 1986 having never won the Nobel Prize in Literature, to the fury of his supporters.

"Not granting me the Nobel Prize has become a Scandinavian tradition; since I was born they have not been granting it to me,” he once said.

The doodle celebrating his life is the latest in a long line of illustrations from Google.

Martin Missfeldt, Berlin based german artist, said the Google Doodle shows a wide architecture scenery.

"The different architecture styles reminds on different regions with different languages," he said.