This is a jewel of a book. Very funny, clever, moving, luminous with love of literature and landscape. Parini's portrait of both Borges and Scotland is exquisite, deeply affectionate, sometimes comically irritable . . . The young Parini's painful writing ambitions are beautifully wrought . . . It's hard to conceive of how an old and frail blind man could have had such psychological force, such unworldly innocence, such redeeming sway over others, but Jay Parini persuades us fabulously in a high-style Borgesian marriage of fiction and history -- IAN McEWAN

For readers who already admire Borges, this memoir will be a delicious treat. For those who have yet to read him, Parini provides the perfect entry point to a writer who altered the way many think of literature - * New York Times *

A classic comic-philosophical road story, playfully conscious of its own traditions . . . Many of the book's loveliest passages are pure geography; as he drives, Jay describes to Borges the passing landscapes of Scotland, to which Borges adds literary and historical context. The pressure to capture Scotland in words for the great Jorge Luis Borges forces Jay to think about language in a new way, to "up his game" as a poet, and this artistic journey, occurring alongside their physical journey, becomes the book's emotional backbone . . . A fun, tightly crafted, tender-hearted literary adventure [and] an improbable tale that, like many improbable tales, happens to be true - * Wall Street Journal *

I don't think I've read any book recently with such outright and unalloyed enjoyment. Jay Parini's wry, ridiculously funny and beautifully written memoir is a literary road trip par excellence. It will open your eyes wide and blow your mind. Devastatingly honest, darkly crazy and deeply touching, this is that rare sort of book: finish it, and you just want to start it all over again -- PHILIP HOARE

Ironic, funny, adorable . . . What a wonderful book! It gave me so much pleasure to read it -- ERICA JONG

Praise for Jay Parini: Inspired . . . a piercing, magnificent novel -- AMOS OZ

A poignant and eloquent vision of the great critic's personality and fate -- HAROLD BLOOM

An exciting adventure story . . . wholly emblematic of our dark age -- GORE VIDAL

The friends who recall Benjamin come across as vivid individuals, but it is Benjamin himself who dominates the book, and he is wonderfully, infuriatingly alive, an intellectual hopelessly out of touch with his ailing body, curiously and tragically blind to the Europe disintegrating around him - * The Sunday Times *

Painstakingly researched and dramatically recounted . . . has something important to say about the role of the intellectual in modern Western Society - * New York Times Book Review *

Jay Parini is Axinn Professor of English at Middlebury College, Vermont. In addition to New and Collected Poems: 1975-2015, he has published eight novels including The Last Station and Benjamin's Crossing. He has written biographies of John Steinbeck, Robert Frost, William Faulkner and Gore Vidal. He edited The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Literature and writes regularly for the Guardian and other publications.

jayparini.com