Recommendations from our site
“Irene Vallejo is a classicist and a novelist. She combines academic research and creative writing to produce a highly accessible book about the ancient world. The book deals with how, in the Mediterranean region, books were produced, cherished, read, burnt, and destroyed. Books are part of our lives now, but we can’t take them for granted. The book explores the history of libraries, specifically the famous library in Alexandria. In a nutshell, Vallejo explores how the ancient world invented tablets, papyrus, and later books. We learn about how Athens and Rome wrote and preserved the word.” Read more...
The 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding
Madawi Al-Rasheed, Anthropologist
Our most recommended books
-
The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe
by James Belich -
Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945
by Halik Kochanski -
Portable Magic: A History of Books and Their Readers
by Emma Smith -
The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire
by Henrietta Harrison -
African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History
by Hakim Adi -
Vagabonds
by Oskar Jensen
