Alberto Manguel (b. 1948, Buenos-Aires) is an Argentine-born writer, translator, and editor. He is the author of numerous non-fiction books such as The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (co-written with Gianni Guadalupi in 1980), A History of Reading (1996), The Library at Night (2007) and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey: A Biography (2008); and novels such as News From a Foreign Country Came (1991). Though almost all of Manguel's books were written in English, two of his novels (El regreso and Todos los hombres son mentirosos) were written in Spanish and have not yet been published in English. Manguel has also written film criticism such as Bride of Frankenstein (1997) and collections of essays such as Into the Looking Glass Wood (1998).
He became a Canadian citizen and continues to identify his nationality as first and foremost Canadian. Manguel contributed regularly to Canadian newspapers and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as to the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Times and the Village Voice, and the Svenska Dagbladet. In 1992, Manguel's novel, News from a Foreign Country Came, won the McKitterick Prize. He directed the Maclean Hunter Arts Journalism Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts for five years and was appointed Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Markin-Flanagan Program at the University of Calgary. In 2000, Manguel purchased with his partner and renovated a medieval presbytery in the Poitou-Charentes region of France to house his 30,000 books, where he currently resides. He has received many prizes, was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and honorary doctorates from the universities of Liège, in Belgium and Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge, UK. He is an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France).
Alberto Manguel's speech at Hrant Dink Memorial Lecture 2009 at ODTÜ
photo credit: claude meninger
"Okumalar Okuması", Yazar Alberto Manguel
Yapı Kredi Yayınları, 2013
Çeviri: Sevin Okyay
Pinokyo’nun okumayı öğrendikten sonra bütün yapabileceği, ders kitabı laflarını papağan gibi tekrarlamaktır. Sayfadaki kelimeleri özümser ama hazmetmez: Kitaplar hakiki anlamda onun olmaz, çünkü hâlâ, maceralarının sonunda bile, onları kendine ve dünyaya ilişkin tecrübelerine uygulamaktan acizdir.
Deneyimin kitapları, kitapların kişisel deneyimi zenginleştirdiği ve dönüştürdüğü yaratıcı bir okuma nasıl olur? Okumalar Okuması tam da bu sorunun yanıtı. Che Guevara’dan Borges’e birçok tanıdık yüz, İlyada’dan Alice Harikalar Diyarında’ya kadar birçok kitap Manguel’in okumalarında, içten ve kışkırtıcı yorumlarında yeniden hayat buluyor.
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