Alberto Manguel is a Canadian citizen born in Buenos Aires in 1948. He has lived in Israel, Argentina, Italy, England, Tahiti, France and Canada. He is the author of five novels, including Dernières nouvelles d'une terre abandonnée (winner of the McKitterick Prize in England and the Authors' Association Prize in Canada). He is also the author of several essays, including Le Dictionnaire des lieux imaginaires (with Gianni Guadalupi) ; Une histoire de la lecture (prix Médicis essai) ; Dans la forêt du miroir (prix France Culture) ; Le Livre d'images ; Chez Borges (prix Poitou-Charentes) and La Bibliothèque la nuit.

Alberto Manguel has been awarded the Premio Germán Sánchez Ruipérez and the Formentor in Spain, and the Alfonso Reyes prize in Mexico, for his body of critical work. In France, he has won the Prix Roger Caillois, the Prix Médicis essai and the Prix France Culture, and has been elected to the rank of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres. In 2018 he was awarded the Gutenberg Prize. He holds honorarydoctorates from the universities of Liège (Belgium), Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge (England), Ottawa University and York University (Canada). He is a member of the Academia Argentina de Letras, the Real Academia Española and the Royal Society of Literature in the UK. Alberto Manguel was Director of the National Library of Argentina from 2015 to 2018. He currently directs the Center for Research on the History of Reading (CEHL) in Lisbon.