|
|
|
© ilb
|
Alberto Manguel
Canada/France
|
Alberto Manguel was born in Buenos Aires in 1948. The son of an Argentinian diplomat, he spent his early childhood in Israel and grew up speaking English first, the language he writes in, before learning Spanish. From birth he has led a cosmopolitan life in different countries, speaking various languages. He learnt to read at the age of four and spent – as an asthmatic confined to his bed for weeks – a large part of his youth only with books. While still at school in Buenos Aires he worked in a bookshop, where the 16-year-old would get to know the blind poet Jorge Luis Borges and become his reader – an episode he later wrote about in his essay »With Borges« (2004). Manguel studied Comparative Literature and went on to dedicate himself to reading and writing in various capacities. He has worked as an editor, written reviews, theatre plays, film scripts, compiled different anthologies and translated, amongst others, Marguerite Yourcenar into English.
In 1991 he published his first novel, »News from a Foreign Country Came« which is set in Canada and Algeria and told in episodes and from different perspectives. The story of an assassination of a former policeman is reconstructed in the period before and after the attack and becomes a critical portrait of society.
With his book »A History of Reading« (1996), Manguel became famous overnight throughout the world. The prize winning essay, which was awarded the Prix Médicis amongst others, tells his own personal biography as reader. Starting from his childhood reading which included works by Lewis Carroll, Robert L. Stevenson and Enid Blyton, he depicts in an exciting way the cultural history of reading and its development from the ancient world to the present day. He does not present the material chronologically, but rather intuitively, as reading for him is always linked to chance. Two years later the essay volume »Into the Looking Glass Wood« (1998) came out in which he deals with the theme of reading as »what remains unchanged is my desire to read, to hold the book in my hand and suddenly feel this unique feeling of amazement, of recognition, the shudder or the warmth which a certain sequence of words, sometimes without any visible reason, can create in us.«
Manguel recently published the novella »El regreso« (2005; t: The return) about a militant politician who after thirty years in exile returns to his home country. This book – written in Spanish – was followed by the story of a fictitious pioneer of photography in 19th-century France, »El amante extremadamente puntilloso« (2006; t: The extremely delicate lover).
Manguel, a citizen of Canada, currently commutes between Toronto, Paris and a small village in Western France, where his library of over 30.000 volumes is located.
© internationales literaturfestival berlin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Im siebten Kreis
Rowohlt
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 1999
[T: Chris Hirte]
Lesen, rollen, scrollen
in: Lettre International 44
Berlin, 1999
www.lettre.de/archiv/44_manguel.html
Eine Geschichte des Lesens
Rowohlt
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2000
[T: Chris Hirte]
Im Spiegelreich
Rowohlt
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2000
[T: Chris Hirte]
Bilder lesen
Rowohlt
Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2002
[T: Chris Hirte]
Argentinien war einmal
in: Lettre International 56
Berlin, 2002
Stevenson unter Palmen
Fischer
Frankfurt/Main, 2003
[T: Chris Hirte]
With Borges
Thomas Allen Publishers
Toronto, 2004
Tagebuch eines Lesers
Fischer
Frankfurt/Main, 2005
[T: Chris Hirte]
El regreso
Emecé Editores
Buenos Aires, 2005
El amante extremadamente puntilloso
Bruguera
Madrid, 2006
|
|
|
|
