TEMPLES OF KNOWLEDGE: LIBRARIES ART AND Format: Hardcover

Devoted to the most renowned Portuguese libraries, this volume details the key role held by knowledge preservation from ancient times until today.

“The library is a group of objects (significant for the transmission of knowledge) that a group of people identifies as fundamental in their existence, their identity and their future, despite the transitory nature of time and the irreversible race towards oblivion that we are all forced to run”.
Journalist and writer Stefano Salis, states that at the beginning of his text. It opens this volume, that retraces the history of libraries and their transformation into temples of knowledge, underscoring the almost sacred beauty of some of these buildings, and follows the evolution of the concept of book, library and librarian. The text by art historian António Filipe Pimentel focuses on Portuguese libraries. Last but not least, Alberto Manguel describes the ups and downs of his personal library, establishing a connection with the universal history of libraries. Stunning photographs by Massimo Listri, portraying the most beautiful and picturesque rooms and ambiences of historic libraries, with a particular focus on Portuguese ones, complete the volume.

Alberto Manguel is an Argentine-Canadian writer, translator, and critic. He has published both fiction and non-fiction, and received numerous international awards, among them the Formentor Prize in 2017 and the Gutenberg Prize in 2018. As an adolescent, in Buenos Aires, from 1965-1969, he read aloud to the blind Jorge Luis Borges. Until August 2018, he was the director of the Argentine National Library. He has lived in Paris, London, Milan, Tahiti, Toronto, New York, and now Lisbon. He occupied the “Europe: Languages and Literatures” chair at the Collège de France from 2021-2022. He is currently the director of Espaço Atlântida: Centro de Estudos da História da Leitura in Lisbon.