Alberto Manguel.

Born in Argentina in 1948, Alberto Manguel is a writer, translator, editor, and literary critic. In his youth, he was Jorge Luis Borges’ secretary, a formative experience that shaped his relationship with literature. After leaving Argentina in 1968, before the repression of the military dictatorship, he traveled the world and lived successively in France, England, Italy, Tahiti, and Canada, where he obtained citizenship. The author of a rich body of work, including essays and novels translated around the world, he has received numerous awards, including the Prix Médicis for Une histoire de la lecture (Actes Sud, 1998) and the Prix France Culture for Dans la forêt du miroir (Actes Sud, 2000). Having lived in France for many years, he was named an Officer of Arts and Letters in 2004. From 2015 to 2018, he directed the National Library of Argentina and now resides in New York. In 2020, he donated his personal library of nearly 40,000 volumes to the city of Lisbon.

He is the author of the preface to Face of the Twentieth Century, published by Éditions du Pacifique.