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
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