Alberto Manguel , na Argentine-Canadian writer, essayist, and editor has devoted much of his life to reflecting on reading and the place of books in cultural history. His work brings together literature, history, and philosophical reflection, exploring reading not only as an intimate experience but also as an intellectual and political act.

At a young age, Manguel became a reader for Jorge Luis Borges, who had by then lost his sight. For several years, he read aloud to him from a wide range of literary traditions - an experience that profoundly shaped his intellectual path and became one of the most widely known episodes of his life.

Internationally recognised for works such as A History of Reading, he examines the many forms reading has taken over the centuries, from ancient libraries to contemporary practices, revealing how readers construct meaning and memory through words. In his essays, libraries emerge as spaces of knowledge, imagination, and cultural resistance.

Throughout his career, he has also played a significant role as a a curator and a leading thinker on book culture , having served as director of the National Library of Argentina. In recent years, he has settled in Portugal, bringing with him his vast personal library, which gave rise to the Centre for the Study of the History of Reading, created in partnership with the Lisbon City Council.

His writing, both erudite and accessible, invites readers to reconsider the value of reading in a world marked by speed and dispersion. Between literary history, memory, and humanist reflection, Alberto Manguel affirms reading as a way of understanding the world and preserving human experience over time.

At Babell, his participation reinforces the idea of the city as a vast, living library where books, readers, and places intertwine in an ongoing cultural conversation.