Alberto Manguel

author profile

gender

male

place of birth

Buenos Aires, Argentina

website

http://www.alberto.manguel.com/

genre

Literature & Fiction, Nonfiction

about this author

edit data

Alberto Manguel (born 1948 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980) and A History of Reading (1996) The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008), and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991).

Manguel believes in the central importance of the book in societies of the written word where, in recent times, the intellectual act has lost most of its prestige. Libraries (the reservoirs of collective memory) should be our essential symbol, not banks. Humans can be defined as reading animals, come into the world to decipher it and t...more

combine editions
books by Alberto Manguel

avg rating: 4.04 | 980 ratings | 204 reviews | 70 distinct works | 12 fans

	A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel avg rating 4.01 — 200 ratings — published 1996 19 editions	my rating:
	The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel avg rating 4.05 — 167 ratings — published 2004 13 editions	my rating:
	The Dictionary of Imaginary Places: The Newly Updated and Expanded Classic by Alberto Manguel, Gianni Guadalupi avg rating 4.25 — 123 ratings — published 1980 9 editions	my rating:
	Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature by Alberto Manguel avg rating 4.59 — 41 ratings — published 1984 4 editions	my rating:
	A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books by Alberto Manguel avg rating 3.76 — 37 ratings — published 2004 12 editions	my rating:
	With Borges by Alberto Manguel avg rating 3.78 — 36 ratings — published 2003 5 editions	my rating:
	The City of Words by Alberto Manguel avg rating 3.87 — 30 ratings — published 2007 3 editions	my rating:
	Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic by Alberto Manguel avg rating 4.64 — 22 ratings — published 1990 2 editions	my rating:
	Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey: A Biography (Books That Changed The World) by Alberto Manguel avg rating 3.91 — 22 ratings — published 2007 9 editions	my rating:
	Other Fires by Alberto Manguel avg rating 4.00 — 12 ratings — published 1985 2 editions	my rating:

More books by Alberto Manguel…

upcoming events

A Translator's Discoveries with Alberto Manguel on tour for the book "The Library at Night"
Author appearance, February 10, 2010 07:00PM
Peter Jay Sharp Theatre, Symphony Space, 2537 Broadway at 95th Street, New York, NY, The United States
Selected Shorts The master translator, anthologist, and booklover (the library ...more

event from BookTour

add new | view all
videos about Alberto Manguel

showing 1 of 3

Alberto Manguel - La Biblioteca de Noche
Alberto Manguel — The Library at Night
42 views Add a comment

quotes by Alberto Manguel

"At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book--that string of confused, alien ciphers--shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader."
— Alberto Manguel

tags: books, childhood, reading

25 people liked it

"Books may not change our suffering, books may not protect us from evil, books may not tell us what is good or what is beautiful, and they will certainly not shield us from the common fate of the grave. But books grant us myriad possibilities: the possibility of change, the possibility of illumination."
— Alberto Manguel (The Library at Night)

tags: book, books, reading

16 people liked it

"I soon discovered that one doesn't simply read Crime and Punishment or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. One reads a certain edition, a specific copy, recognizable by the roughness or the smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover. "
— Alberto Manguel (A History of Reading)

11 people liked it

see all Alberto Manguel's quotes »