PAPYRUS

Imagination and historical research converge in this memoir-ish book about books and a whole lot more.

Spanish author Vallejo, here “consumed by the book I’m writing,” beckons readers to join her on a sprawling, learned, lively personal history tour of books—“a silent dialogue between you and me.” The narrative quickly morphs into a comprehensive, fact-laden, occasionally rambling intellectual history of ancient Greece and Rome. The author opens with a fablelike story about a king sending out hunters to find books, papyrus scrolls in many languages, “light, beautiful, and portable,” for a great library in Alexandria. When Mark Antony arrived, he tried to woo Cleopatra with a special gift: 200,000 books for the city’s library. “In Alexandria,” writes Vallejo, “books served as fuel for passion,” and that institution became the world’s first public library. After Alexander died young, King Ptolemy worked to maintain the vast library, enlisting the help of a variety of scholars. Vallejo’s narrative jumps around: illuminating tales from ancient history, descriptions of her research in Oxford’s libraries, how to read a scroll, the education of a scribe, our fascination with The Iliad and The Odyssey. Throughout, the author draws on other writers (Borges, Christopher Morley, Umberto Eco) and films (Memento, It’s a Wonderful Life) to help make her points, and she is clearly filled with wonder about myriad topics, almost all literary. For example, how many books were in ancient Greece? How many people could read then? Before turning her gaze to Rome, she discusses libraries in Nazi concentration camps. When the Romans led their military expeditions into Greece, they turned its books “into the spoils of war.” In the “story of books in Rome, slaves are the protagonists.” Vallejo frequently diverges from her primary path, covering education, religious persecution, the rise of reading, bookselling, and countless other topics.

Unquestionably erudite, but the vast amount of information in this digressive work may limit the appeal.