Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges was BOTD in 1899. Born in Buenos Aires to a prominent intellectual family, he moved with his family to Europe in his teens, becoming fluent in English, French and German. While living in Spain, he became a member of the literary avant-garde and began writing poetry. Returning to Argentina in the 1920s, he became a regular contributor to literary journals and published several poetry collections. His writings blended fiction, mythology, non-fiction, philosophy and fantasy elements, a style that became known as “irrealism”. In the 1930s he became progressively blind, supporting himself as a lecturer and becoming director of the Argentine National Library. His international reputation grew in the 1940s with English-language translations of his story collections Labyrinths, Fictions and The Aleph. He won several international prizes and undertook extensive speaking tours, despite being totally blind. A committed anti-Fascist, he was a fierce critic of the Nazi Party and later of Argentinean military dictator Juan Perón. He initially supported the military junta of 1976, but revised his stance following the murders of political dissidents. He lived for most of his life with his mother, who acted as his secretary as he lost his sight. He was married twice, latterly to his assistant María Kodama who became the beneficiary of his estate. He died in 1986, aged 86. Biographers continue to debate whether Borges may have been gay, pointing to homoerotic themes and the absence of women in his work, and his professed admiration for literary queers Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman.