One particular display from the London 2012 Festival that caught our attention here at the Literature and Languages Library is aMAZEme, an awe-inspiring installation dreamed up by Brazilian artists Marcos Saboya and Gualter Pupo. Click here to see some great images of the piece. The architectural sculpture is made out of a whopping 250,000 books and is inspired by the fiction of the Argentinian writer and librarian Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). Borges’ work regularly deploys library and labyrinthine motifs. In fact, one of his most popular collections translated for English is titled Labyrinths (1962, tr. Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby). Reportedly, Saboya and Pupo designed their massive book labyrinth to the design of Borges’ fingerprint.

UIUC Libraries have over 250 books authored by Borges, including Ficciones (1944), his most popular book.