Thursday, 4:30 PM
Missing Jorge Luis Borges manuscripts found
By Andrew Ryan, Globe Correspondent
There was no great literary heist from a Harvard Square bookstore after all.
Two handwritten manuscripts by renowned Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges have been found among some boxes at Lame Duck Books, according to an employee at the store. The short stories had not been seen since Nov. 12, when the book store's owner showed the works at an antiquarian book fair in Hamburg, Germany.
The missing manuscripts -- "Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote" and "The Library of Babel" -- were listed in the store's catalog at $450,000 and $500,000. The owner of Lame Duck Books had filed a police report with Cambridge police on Nov. 17, and the works were considered stolen.
The Harvard Crimson reported the potential theft in the edition that came out this morning, and Borges scholars lamented the loss of the first draft of two of the writer's most important stories.
After the story hit newsstands and was picked up on radio, employees at the book store found the missing manuscripts. The works had been misplaced after the book fair in Hamburg.
