Books by Alberto Manguel

This history of reading goes from the earliest examples of the clay tablets and cuneiform of ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt to today's digital revolution. It argues that it is the demands of the reader, acting alongside the will of the writer, that is the evolutionary motor of literary genres.

An original look at how literary characters can transcend their books to guide our lives, by one of the world's most eminent bibliophiles

Rich with literary awards and honours, Alberto Manguel extends his literary genius to address and complete a thoughtfully crafted extrapolation on a paper left unfinished by Northrop Frye in 1943. The result is a succinct yet densely multilayered examination of how various readings of Homer throughout the annals of history cast light upon the human tendency towards war rather than peace and asks what roles writing and reading play to bring the world into better equilibrium. Central to this lecture is the concept of re-binding, a word drawn from the Latin roots for the word religion, which Manguel posits is the essential definition of poetry. Homer's writings, the point of origin of all written verse, are also the first written instance of the binding of imagined, written, and read realities. The semantics of Homer's name and the literal and figurative ramifications of his blindness are investigated as Manguel builds the scaffold for unveiling our own blindness through our desire to read Homer in our own image. We are left to examine our own assumptions.Comblé de prix littéraires et d'honneurs, Alberto Manguel prête son génie littéraire à l'étude et au parachèvement d'une extrapolation songée que Northrop Frye avait laissée en plan en 1943. Il en résulte une analyse succincte mais en replis serrés des multiples lectures d'Homère léguées par les siècles, qui révèle comment ces interprétations éclairent la propension humaine à la guerre plutôt qu'à la paix, ce qui le mène à s'interroger sur le rôle que jouent l'écriture et la lecture quand il s'agit de créer un monde plus équilibré. La notion de re-lier, un mot dont les racines latines sont les mêmes que le mot religion, est au coeur de cette conférence, et Manguel en fait la définition essentielle de la poésie. Les écrits d'Homère, point d'origine de toute la poésie écrite, fournissent aussi la première occurrence d'un lien entre les réalités imaginées, écrites et lues. La valeur sémantique du nom d'Homère et les répercussions concrètes et figurées de sa cécité font partie des éléments que Manguel scrute pour fonder son évocation de notre aveuglement à nous quand nous insistons pour lire Homère à notre propre image. Nous n'avons plus qu'à remettre nos hypothèses.

A best-selling author and world-renowned bibliophile meditates on his vast personal library and champions the vital role of all libraries

Alberto Manguel examines metaphors of readers and reading from literatures across centuries and the globe, from the ancient epic Gilgamesh to the World Wide Web, from the adventures of Ulysses to the tragedy of Emma Bovary, and he considers how these metaphors reflect the cultures that invent them.

From ancient Greece to the close of the second millennium, the keen scientific eye has been translated over and over into graceful and meaningful texts in which not only the world observed but the act of observation itself is set down for the common reader. By the Light of the Glow-Worm Lamp represents the best of the nature-writing genre in over three dozen works from the past three centuries.

Inspired by the process of creating a library for his fifteenth-century home near the Loire, in France, Alberto Manguel, the acclaimed writer on books and reading, has taken up the subject of libraries. Libraries, he says, have always seemed to me pleasantly mad places, and for as long as I can remember Ive been seduced by their labyrinthine logic. In this personal, deliberately unsystematic, and wide-ranging book, he offers a captivating meditation on the meaning of libraries.Manguel, a guide of irrepressible enthusiasm, conducts a unique library tour that extends from his childhood bookshelves to the complete libraries of the Internet, from Ancient Egypt and Greece to the Arab world, from China and Rome to Google. He ponders the doomed library of Alexandria as well as the personal libraries of Charles Dickens, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. He recounts stories of people who have struggled against tyranny to preserve freedom of thoughtthe Polish librarian who smuggled books to safety as the Nazis began their destruction of Jewish libraries; the Afghani bookseller who kept his store open through decades of unrest. Oral memory libraries kept alive by prisoners, libraries of banned books, the imaginary library of Count Dracula, the library of books never writtenManguel illuminates the mysteries of libraries as no other writer could. With scores of wonderful images throughout, The Library at Night is a fascinating voyage through Manguels mind, memory, and vast knowledge of books and civilizations.

While travelling in Calgary, Alberto Manguel was struck by how the novel he was reading seemed to reflect the world he was living in.

In the lush, uninhibited atmosphere of Samoa, Robert Louis Stevenson is languishing with the disease that will soon kill him;

Includes essays that discuss the nature of books and literature as a moral imperative and explore the consequences of society's betrayal of its readers and writers. This title covers writers such as Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortazar and G K Chesterton, as well as Che Guevara and Goethe.