María Kodama, widow of Jorge Luis Borges and executor of his work, died

The Argentine writer and translator María Kodama, widow and main disseminator of the work of Jorge Luis Borges, died this Sunday at the age of 86

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Kodama was born in Buenos Aires in 1937 and was the daughter of the Japanese Yosaburo Kodama and the Argentine María Antonia Schweizer.

She met Borges when she was 16 years old and he was 54, when she bumped into him on the street, at the exit of a bookstore.

She told him that she was going to study Literature and he invited her to study ancient English together, from which time they had not been separated again.

Despite the fact that in 1967, Borges married another woman, Elsa Astete, Kodama continued to see the Argentine writer and they finally got married in 1986.

Two years after the death of the creator of “El Aleph”, in 1988, Kodama created the Jorge Luis Borges International Foundation in Buenos Aires.

(With information from Agencies)