Disclaimer: I’ve Been Accused of Borges

The Watchman stories, I am told, carry the faint whiff of Borges. Some readers have even gone so far as to suggest plagiarism; that my labyrinths of memory, forgotten manuscripts, and ambiguous merchants are merely reheated Argentine leftovers. To which I must reply: guilty… but only by accident. […] I knew of him, mostly through Umberto Eco (my literary idol) […] But - to my chagrin and utter embarrassment - I had never opened his pages. Not once.

[…] And since ignorance is no excuse, I now set myself the task of reading Borges at last. At least then, when the next accusation arrives, I can respond with footnotes. Only there’s a catch: try doing that in Romanian. It is, frankly, a nightmare.