The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges (born today in 1899) has a reputation in the literary world that is almost in inverse proportion to his slim output. A painstaking stylist, he published in a wide variety of areas—short stories of various genres, poems, essays, literary criticism—but kept his pieces short: His longest story was the 14-pager “The Congress” (1971).

Nevertheless, Borges was widely revered, largely due to his influential English-language story-and-essay collection Labyrinths (1962). Highly attentive to the awards he received and did not, Borges was reportedly saddened by his failure to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature (rubbing salt in his wounded pride, reporters would gather outside his door each year on the day of the prize’s announcement).

Unlike many South American writers who gain an international following, Borges’ politics were somewhat reactionary. He praised the brutal military dictatorship that took over Argentina from the Peronists and accepted a medal from the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, neither of which likely endeared him to the Nobel committee.