In the final decade of his life, Borges embarked on a tour of the United States to take part in a series of dialogues organized by some of the nation's most prestigious universities (Chicago, Indiana, Columbia, and M.I.T., among others). The journey traces an unsettling cartography: Borges converses about the meaning of the universe with an astrophysicist, about mysticism with an expert in Kabbalah, and about the blurred boundary between reality and fiction with writers and poets. He attends a gathering at the PEN Club in New York and even grants an interview to a television personality: Dick Cavett. Throughout these encounters, the Argentine writer evokes dreams and nightmares, Norse sagas, phrases from Old English, the presence of the "other" and of the double. The intellectual pleasure of conversation also leads Borges — ordinarily reluctant to confide — to reveal the meaning of symbols and plots in several of his works. Martin Hadis's translation and notes, together with Willis Barnstone's remarkable photographs, yield in these pages a sensitive and eep portrait of that essential mystery of literature we know as Borges.