Selected and Introduced by Alberto Manguel

Summer is the season for reading. Whether lying on the beach or curled up in a chair on the veranda, on a plane to faraway places or taking in the view from a hotel balcony, reading is the most decadent of summer activities. In The Penguin Book of Summer Stories, internationally acclaimed anthologist Alberto Manguel offers a wonderful collection of twenty brilliant stories set in the leisurely time of summer to enjoy and, at the same time, to follow other people’s mysterious lives or take part in someone else’s dramatic adventure.

Margaret Atwood * Ray Bradbury * Italo Calvino * Albert Camus * Mohamed Choukri * Julio Cortazar * Anita Desai * Helen Garner * Isabel Huggan * Shimaki Kensaku * Bernard MacLaverty * Daphne du Maurier * Gabriel Garcia Márquez * Ludmila Petrushevskaya * Wallace Stegner * Graham Swift * Elizabeth Taylor * John Updike * Tennessee Williams * A.B. Yehoshua

Internationally acclaimed as an anthologist, translator, essayist, novelist, and editor, Alberto Manguel is the bestselling author of several award-winning books, including A Dictionary of Imaginary Places, with Gianni Guadalupi, and A History of Reading. Manguel grew up in Israel, where his father was the Argentinian ambassador.

In the mid-1980s, Manguel moved to Toronto where he lived for twenty years. Manguel's novel, News from a Foreign Country Came, won the McKitterick Prize in 1992. During the 1990s, he wrote regularly for the Globe & Mail (Toronto), the Times Literary Supplement (London), the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm). In 2000, Manguel moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner purchased and renovated a medieval farmhouse. Among the renovations is an oak-panelled library housing Manguel's collection of 30,000 books.

Célébrité internationale à plus d’un titre — il est anthologiste, traducteur, essayiste, romancier et éditeur — Alberto Manguel est l’auteur du Dictionnaire des lieux imaginaires, en collaboration avec Gianni Guadalupi, et d’une Histoire de la lecture, entre autres succès de librairie. Manguel a grandi en Israël où son père était ambassadeur de l’Argentine.

Au milieu des années 1980, Manguel s’installe à Toronto où il vivra pendant vingt ans. Il reçoit le McKitterick Prize en 1992 pour son roman News from a Foreign Country Came (Dernières nouvelles d'une terre abandonnée). Pendant les années 1990, il a été collaborateur régulier au Globe & Mail (Toronto), au Times Literary Supplement (Londres), au Sydney Morning Herald, au Australian Review of Books, au New York Times et au Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm). Depuis 2000, Manguel habite la région française de Poitou-Charentes, dans une maison de ferme du Moyen-Âge qu’il a achetée et remise à neuf avec son compagnon. Parmi les rénovations, une bibliothèque lambrissée de chêne qui abrite les 30 000 livres de la collection de Manguel.

Alberto Manguel's profile page