Alberto Manguel | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Manguel in 2025 | |
| Born | Alberto Manguel (1948-03-13)March 13, 1948 (age 77) |
| Nationality | Argentinian, Canadian, French |
| Period | 1980–present |
| Genre | Novel, essay |
| Notable works | A History ofReading,The Dictionary of Imaginary Places |
Alberto ManguelOC FRSL (born March 13, 1948, inBuenos Aires) is anArgentine-Canadian anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, editor, and a former director of theNational Library of Argentina. He is a cosmopolitan and polyglot scholar, speaking English, Spanish, German, and French fluently, and also Italian and Portuguese at a very advanced level. He left Argentina at the age of twenty, in 1968. He has lived in Israel (Tel Aviv, 1948-1955), Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1955-1968), France (Paris, 1968-1971, and Poitou-Charentes, 2000-2015), United Kingdom (London, 1972), Italy (Milan, 1974-1979), French Polynesia (Tahiti, 1973-1974), Canada (Toronto, 1980-2000), United States (New York; 2015-2020) and Portugal (Lisbon, since 2021). Since 2021 he has directed an international center for reading studies in Lisbon, baptized in 2023 as Espaço Atlântida; In the biography of the center's website you can read: "He became a Canadian citizen and continues to identify his nationality as first and foremost Canadian."[1]
He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such asThe Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980),A History ofReading (1996),The Library at Night (2007) andHomer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and novels such asNews From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novels (El regreso andTodos los hombres son mentirosos) were written in Spanish, andEl regreso has not yet been published in English. Manguel has also written film criticism such asBride of Frankenstein (1997) and collections of essays such asInto the Looking Glass Wood (1998). In 2007, Manguel was selected to be that year's annual lecturer for the prestigiousMassey Lectures. in 2021, he gave the Roger Lancelyn Green lecture to the Lewis Carroll Society on his love of the 'Alice' stories from Lewis Carroll.
For more than twenty years, Manguel has edited a number of literaryanthologies on a variety of themes or genres ranging from erotica and gay stories to fantastic literature and mysteries.
Manguel was born to Pablo and Rosalia Manguel, both Jewish.[2] He spent his first years inIsrael where his father Pablo was the Argentine ambassador, returning to his native country at the age of seven. Later, in Buenos Aires, when Manguel was still a teenager, he met the writerJorge Luis Borges, a customer of the Pygmalion Anglo-German bookshop in Buenos Aires where Manguel worked after school. As Borges was almost blind, he would ask others to read out loud for him, and Manguel became one of Borges' readers, several times a week from 1964 to 1968.
In Buenos Aires, Manguel attended theColegio Nacional de Buenos Aires from 1961 to 1966; among his teachers were notable Argentinian intellectuals such as the historianAlberto Salas, the Cervantes scholar Isaias Lerner and the literary critic Enrique Pezzoni. Manguel did one year (1967) at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Filosofía y Letras, but he abandoned his studies and started working at the recently founded Editorial Galerna ofGuillermo Schavelzon (who thirty-five years later, now established inBarcelona, was to become Manguel's literary agent). In 1969 Manguel travelled to Europe and worked as a reader for various publishing companies:Denoël,Gallimard andLes Lettres Nouvelles inParis, and Calder & Boyars inLondon.
In 1971, Manguel, living then in Paris and London, was awarded the Premio La Nación (Buenos Aires) for a collection of short stories. The prize was shared with the writerBernardo Schiavetta. In 1972 Manguel returned to Buenos Aires and worked for a year as a reporter for the newspaperLa Nación.In 1974, he was offered employment as foreign editor at the Franco Maria Ricci publishing company in Milan. Here he met Gianni Guadalupi and later, at Guadalupi's suggestion, wrote with himThe Dictionary of Imaginary Places. The book is a travel guide to fantasy lands, islands, cities, and other locations from world literature, includingRuritania,Shangri-La,Xanadu,Atlantis,L. Frank Baum'sOz,Lewis Carroll'sWonderland,Thomas More'sUtopia,Edwin Abbott'sFlatland,C. S. Lewis'Narnia, and the realms ofFrancois Rabelais,Jonathan Swift, andJ.R.R. Tolkien.In 1976, Manguel moved toTahiti, where he worked as editor for Les Éditions du Pacifique until 1977. He then worked for the same company in Paris for one year.In 1978 Manguel settled inMilford,Surrey (England) and set up the short-lived Ram Publishing Company.In 1979, Manguel returned to Tahiti to work again for Les Éditions du Pacifique, this time until 1982.
| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Presentation by Manguel onA History of Reading, October 22, 1996,C-SPAN |
In 1982 Manguel moved toToronto, Ontario, Canada and lived there (with a brief European period) until 2000. He has been a Canadian citizen ever since. Here Manguel contributed regularly toThe Globe and Mail (Toronto),The Times Literary Supplement (London),The Village Voice (New York),The Washington Post,The Sydney Morning Herald,The Australian Review of Books,The New York Times andSvenska Dagbladet (Stockholm), and reviewed books and plays for theCanadian Broadcasting Corporation. Manguel's early impression of Canada was that it was "...like one of those places whose existence we assume because of a name on a sign above a platform, glimpsed at as our train stops and then rushes on." (from Passages: Welcome Home to Canada (2002), with preface by Rudyard Griffiths).[3] As well, though, Manguel noted that "When I arrived in Canada, for the first time I felt I was living in a place where I could participate actively as a writer in the running of the state."[4]
In 1983, he selected the stories for what is perhaps his best-known anthologyBlack Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature. His first novel, "News From a Foreign Country Came", won theMcKitterick Prize in 1992.
In 1997, Manguel translated into EnglishThe Anatomist, first novel of the Argentine writerFederico Andahazi.
He was appointed as the Distinguished Visiting Writer in theMarkin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program at theUniversity of Calgary from 1997 to 1999. Manguel was the Opening Lecturer at the "Exile & Migration" Congress,Boston University, in June 1999, and theTimes Literary Supplement lecturer in 1997.
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In 2000, Manguel moved to thePoitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner purchased and renovated a medieval presbytery. Among the renovations was an oak-panelled library to house Manguel's nearly 40,000 books.[5] In September 2020, the collection was donated to the Centre for Research in the History of Reading inLisbon, Portugal with Manguel as its head.[6]
Manguel held theCátedra Cortázar at theUniversidad de Guadalajara,Mexico, in 2007 and theS. Fischer Chair at theFreie Universität Berlin, in 2003. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from theUniversity of Liège.
Manguel delivered the 2007Massey Lectures which were later published asThe City of Words and in the same year delivered theNorthrop Frye-Antonine Maillet Lecture inMoncton,New Brunswick. He was thePratt Lecturer atMemorial University of Newfoundland, in 2003.
In 2008, theCentre Georges Pompidou in Paris honoured Alberto Manguel as part of its 30th Anniversary Celebrations, by inviting him to set up a three-month long program of lectures, film and round tables.
He writes a regular column forGeist magazine.
Manguel's bookHistory of Reading was referenced as a source of inspiration to theBook of Sand film.[7] He suffered astroke in December 2013, and reflected on the experience in a 2014op-ed inThe New York Times.[8]
In 2011 he delivered theA.S.W. Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography, "The Traveller, the Tower and the Worm " at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.
In December 2015 he was named director of theNational Library in his native Argentina, replacing Horacio González.[9] Manguel held the post from July 2016 to August 2018.[10]
In 2018 he was awarded theGutenberg Prize of the International Gutenberg Society and the City of Mainz.
In 2021 he was elected to theRoxburghe Club.[11]
He was married to Pauline Ann Brewer from 1975 to 1986, and their children are Alice Emily, Rachel Claire, and Rupert Tobias.[2] Upon divorcing Brewer in 1987, Manguel began seeing his current partner Craig Stephenson.[12][13]
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