A Reader on Reading

Alberto Manguel

NON FICTION. YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2010. ALIANZA, 2012. 320 PAGES.

In this major collection of his essays, Alberto Manguel argues that the activity of reading, in its broadest sense, defines our species. "We come into the world intent on finding narrative in everything," writes Manguel, "landscape, the skies, the faces of others, the images and words that our species create."
The essays explore the crafts of reading and writing, the identity granted to us by literature, the far-reaching shadow of Jorge Luis Borges, and the links between politics and books and between books and our bodies. The powers of censorship and intellectual curiosity, the art of translation, and those "numinous memory palaces we call libraries" also figure in this remarkable collection. For Manguel and his readers, words, in spite of everything, lend coherence to the world and offer us "a few safe places, as real as paper and as bracing as ink".

"Books jump out of their jackets when Manguel opens them

and dance in delight as they make contact with his ingenious, voluminous brain."

THE OBSERVER

PUBLISHED BY: English worldwide YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS | Latin America OCÉANO | Spain ALIANZA | Arabic Worldwide DAR AL SAQUI | China GUANGXI CHINA NORMAL UNIVERSITY PRESS / COMMERCIAL PRESS TAIPEI | France ACTES SUD | Japan HAKUSUISHA | The Netherlands AMBO ANTHOS | Turkey YAPI KREDI | Korea KYOBO BOOK CENTER | Hong Kong/Macao COMMERCIAL PRESS TAIPEI | Romania NEMIRA / TREI

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