1998
First Published
3.87
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages
Alberto Manguel has enchanted hundreds of thousands of readers with his bestselling books, including The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. Now he has assembled a personal collection of his own essays that will enchant anyone interested in reading, writing, or the world. Through personal stories and literary reflections, in a style rich in humor and gentle scholarship, Manguel leads his readers to reflect on the links that bind the physical world to our language that describes it. The span of his attention in these twenty-three essays is enthralling: from "Who Am I?," in which he recounts the first adventures of childhood reading, to "Borges in Love," a memoir of the great blind writer's passions; from his first encounters with the evils of prejudice to a meditation on the death of Che Guevara; from a tour of his library to evocations of such of his favorite writers as Cortázar and Chesterton. A voyage deep into the subversive heart of words, Into the Looking-Glass Wood is fired by the author's humanity, insatiable curiosity, and steadfast belief in the essential power, mystery, and delight of the written word.
Avg Rating
3.87
Number of Ratings
221
5 STARS
23%
4 STARS
48%
3 STARS
24%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
1%
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Author
Alberto Manguel
Author · 27 books
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 themselves.
