24 Facts About Alberto Manguel

Alberto Manguel is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, A History of Reading, The Library at Night and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography ; and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came.

Alberto Manguel has written film criticism such as Bride of Frankenstein and collections of essays such as Into the Looking Glass Wood.

In 2007, Alberto Manguel was selected to be that year's annual lecturer for the prestigious Massey Lectures.

For more than twenty years, Alberto Manguel has edited a number of literary anthologies on a variety of themes or genres ranging from erotica and gay stories to fantastic literature and mysteries.

Alberto Manguel was born to Pablo and Rosalia Alberto Manguel, both Jewish.

Alberto Manguel spent his first years in Israel where his father Pablo was the Argentine ambassador, returning to his native country at the age of seven.

Later, in Buenos Aires, when Alberto Manguel was still a teenager, he met the writer Jorge Luis Borges, a customer of the Pygmalion Anglo-German bookshop in Buenos Aires where Alberto Manguel worked after school.

Alberto Manguel did one year at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Filosofia y Letras, but he abandoned his studies and started working at the recently founded Editorial Galerna of Guillermo Schavelzon.

In 1971, Alberto Manguel, living then in Paris and London, was awarded the Premio La Nacion for a collection of short stories.

In 1972 Alberto Manguel returned to Buenos Aires and worked for a year as a reporter for the newspaper La Nacion.

In 1976, Alberto Manguel moved to Tahiti, where he worked as editor for Les Editions du Pacifique until 1977.

Alberto Manguel then worked for the same company in Paris for one year.

In 1978 Alberto Manguel settled in Milford, Surrey and set up the short-lived Ram Publishing Company.

In 1979, Alberto Manguel returned to Tahiti to work again for Les Editions du Pacifique, this time until 1982.

In 1982 Alberto Manguel moved to Toronto, Ontario, Canada and lived there until 2000.

In 1997, Alberto Manguel translated into English The Anatomist, first novel of the Argentine writer Federico Andahazi.

Alberto Manguel was appointed as the Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary from 1997 to 1999.

In 2000, Alberto Manguel moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner purchased and renovated a medieval presbytery.

Alberto Manguel delivered the 2007 Massey Lectures which were later published as The City of Words and in the same year delivered the Northrop Frye-Antonine Maillet Lecture in Moncton, New Brunswick.

Alberto Manguel was the Pratt Lecturer at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in 2003.

Alberto Manguel suffered a stroke in December 2013, and reflected on the experience in a 2014 op-ed in The New York Times.

Alberto Manguel held the post from July 2016 to August 2018.

Alberto Manguel was married to Pauline Ann Brewer from 1975 to 1986, and their children are Alice Emily, Rachel Claire, and Rupert Tobias.

Alberto Manguel has been a member of the Roxburghe Club since 2021.