"Lectures ... delivered by Borges in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Coliseo at intervals between June and August 1977"--Introduction.

Of the translations in this volume, "The Thousand and One Nights" first appeared in The Georgia Review and "Blindness" in Harper's Magazine.

"Jorge Luis Borges's fictions blur the distinctions between fact and fantasy, scholarship and imagination. Behind his playful cerebrations lies an impressive erudition amassed over a lifetime of study, in spite of failing eyesight and eventual blindness. Allusive motifs run through his writings in amazing diversity, and in Seven Nights they are distilled into the form of public lectures, originally given in Buenos Aires in 1977, and now made available for the first time in English translation. "The Divine Comedy"; "Nightmare"; "The Thousand and One Nights"; "Buddhism"; "Poetry"; "The Kabbalah"; "Blindness" - the relevance of these lectures to Borges's oeuvre is thoughtfully explored in an introduction by Alastair Reid, who as a translator has in the past himself worked closely with the author. The texts themselves have been rendered into English by Eliot Weinberger, translator of the poetry of Octavio Paz and Homero Aridjis." --,Back Cover.

The seven lectures which make up this volume were delivered by Borges in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Coliseo, at intervals between June and August 1977. In an Epilogue to the first Spanish edition of the book, published in Mexico in 1980, Roy Bartholomew tells how the lectures were widely taped, appeared later as pirated records, and were widely in a cut and mangled form, in the literary supplement of a Buenos Aires newspaper.

Translation of: Siete noches.

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