Fiction
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges — The essential Argentine book. Short stories that blend philosophy, mathematics, and imagination into something entirely new. Borges spent most of his life in Buenos Aires, and his labyrinthine Buenos Aires is still recognizable.
The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges — Another essential Borges collection, with the title story set in a house in Buenos Aires's San Telmo neighborhood.
Santa Evita by Tomás Eloy Martínez — A novel built around the strange afterlife of Eva Perón's embalmed body. Obsessive and brilliant.
Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig — Two men in a Buenos Aires prison, one of them a gay man who recounts old films to pass the time. A masterpiece of Latin American literature.
The Tango Singer by Tomás Eloy Martínez — A New York student comes to Buenos Aires searching for a legendary tango singer. As much a portrait of the city as a novel.
Non-fiction & history
In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin — The book that put Patagonia on the literary map. Eccentric, literary, and not entirely reliable, but wonderful.
The Motorcycle Diaries by Ernesto Che Guevara — Guevara's journal of the 1952 road trip he took as a young medical student through South America, including Argentina.
On Argentina by Jorge Luis Borges — Essays, poems, and stories through which Borges explored his homeland. A valuable companion for anyone visiting Buenos Aires.
Tango
Tango: The Art History of Love by Robert Farris Thompson — A wide-ranging cultural history of tango from its origins to the present.
Paper Tangos by Julie Taylor — An anthropologist's memoir of learning tango in Buenos Aires, with sharp observations about Argentine gender relations and politics.