The Portuguese capital will rehabilitate a palace to house the valuable collection of the Argentine writer, kept in Montreal, Canada, since 2015
The 72-year-old Argentine essay writer and essayist Alberto Manguel’s bibliographical treasure, composed of about 40 thousand volumes, was enclosed in boxes in a warehouse in Montreal five years ago. After his abrupt departure from France, Manguel received several offers to host the collection – none of them from Spain. None went as far or liked as much as the one formulated earlier this year by the Mayor of Lisbon, the socialist Fernando Medina.
The proposal includes the creation of the Center for the Study of the History of Reading / CEHL), of which Manguel will be the director. Among the members of the Honorary Council are authors such as Olga Tokarczuk (Nobel Prize in 2019), Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie and Chico Buarque, as well as a considerable list of directors from the major literary centers of international libraries. Among them, Cardinal Tolentino Mendonça, responsible for the Vatican Library.
Read more in Portuguese at Plataforma.
