Author: Irene Vallejo Moreau
- Non-Fiction
- Editorial Siruela
- ISBN: 9780593312575
- Release Date: 08-24-2021
-Reviewed by: Lecturalia

Published in 2019

This is a book about the history of books. A journey through the life of that fascinating artifact we invented so that words could travel through space and time. The history of its manufacture, of all the types we have tried over almost thirty centuries: books made of smoke, stone, clay, reeds, silk, leather, trees, and the most recent arrival, made of plastic and light.

It is also a travel book. A route with stops at Alexander's battlefields and the Villa of the Papyri under the eruption of Vesuvius, Cleopatra's palaces and the scene of Hypatia's crime, the first known bookstores and handwritten copy workshops, the bonfires where forbidden codices were burned, the gulag, the Sarajevo library and the underground labyrinth of Oxford in 2000. A thread that unites the classics with the vertiginous contemporary world, connecting them with current debates: Aristophanes and the trials against comedians, Sappho and the literary voice of women, Titus Livy and the fan phenomenon, Seneca and post-truth.

Best Book of the 21st Century according to Spanish booksellers

Shortlisted for the 2023 British Academy Book Prize for Global Cultural Understanding.

From smoke, stone, clay, silk, leather, trees, plastic, and light ... A journey through the life of books and of those who have safeguarded them for almost thirty centuries.

This is a book about the history of books. A journey through the life of that fascinating object that we invented so that words could travel in space and time.

It is also a travel book whose route has stopovers in the battlefields of Alexander the Great and in the Villa of the Papyri during Mount Vesuvius’ eruption, in Cleopatra’s palaces and at the scene of Hypatia’s murder, in the first-ever known bookstores and in the workshops where manuscripts were copied, at the bonfires where forbidden texts were burned, in the gulag, in the Sarajevo library, and in the Oxford underground labyrinth in 2000. It is a thread that unites classics with the dizzying contemporary world, connecting them with current debates: Aristophanes and the judicial processes against comedy-writers, Sapphoand the literary voice of women, Tito Livio and the fan phenomenon, Seneca and post-truth.

But above all, this is a fabulous collective adventure starring thousands of people who, over time, have made books possible and have protected them.