Early years
Manguel grew up in Israel, where his father was the Argentinian ambassador. Later, in Buenos Aires, when Manguel was still a teenager, he met the writer Jorge Luis Borges, a customer of the Pygmalion Anglo-German bookshop in Buenos Aires where Manguel worked after school. As Borges was almost blind, he would ask others to read out loud for him, and Manguel was fortunate enough to become one of Borges' readers, several times a week from 1964 to 1968.
In Buenos Aires, Manguel attended the Colegio Nacional de Buenos Aires from 1961 to 1966; among his teachers were notable Argentinian intellectuals such as the historian Alberto Salas, the Cervantes scholar Isaias Lerner and the literary critic Enrique Pezzoni. Manguel did one year (1967) at the Universidad de Buenos Aires, Filosofía y Letras, but then abandoned his studies and started work at the recently founded Editorial Galerna of Guillermo Schavelzon (who thirty-five years later, now established in Barcelona, was to become Manguel's literary agent). In 1969 Manguel travelled to Europe and worked as a reader for various publishing companies: Denoél, Gallimard and Les Lettres Nouvelles in Paris, and Calder & Boyars in London.
1970s
In 1971, Manguel, living then in Paris and London, was awarded the Premio La Nación (Buenos Aires) for a collection of short stories. The prize was shared with the writer Bernardo Schiavetta.In 1972 Manguel returned to Buenos Aires and worked for a year as a reporter for the newspaper La Nación.In 1974, he was offered employment as foreign editor at the Franco Maria Ricci publishing company in Milan. Here he met Gianni Guadalupi and later, at Guadalupi's suggestion, wrote with him The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. The book is a travel guide to fantasy lands, islands, cities, and other locations from world literature, including Ruritania, Shangri-La, Xanadu, Atlantis, L. Frank Baum's Oz, Lewis Carroll's Wonderland, Thomas More's Utopia, Edwin Abbott's Flatland, C. S. Lewis' Narnia, and the realms of Jonathan Swift and J.R.R. Tolkien.In 1976, Manguel moved to Tahiti, where he worked as editor for Les Editions du Pacifique until 1977. He then worked for the same company in Paris for one year.In 1978 Manguel settled in Milford, Surrey (England) and set up the short-lived Ram Publishing Company.In 1979, Manguel returned to Tahiti to work again for Les Editions du Pacifique, this time until 1982.
1980s-1990s
In 1982 Manguel moved to Toronto, Canada and lived there (with a brief European period) until 2000. He has been a Canadian citizen ever since. Here Manguel contributed regularly to The Globe and Mail (Toronto), The Times Literary Supplement (London), The Village Voice (New York), The Washington Post, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian Review of Books, The New York Times and the Svenska Dagbladet (Stockholm), and reviewed books and plays for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Manguel's early impression of Canada was that it was "...like one of those places whose existence we assume because of a name on a sign above a platform, glimpsed at as our train stops and then rushes on." (from Passages: Welcome Home to Canada (2002), with preface by Rudyard Griffiths). THE PENGUIN DICTIONARY OF POPULAR CANADIAN QUOTATIONS - John Robert Colombo - Penguin Books. As well, though, Manguel noted that "When I arrived in Canada, for the first time I felt I was living in a place where I could participate actively as a writer in the running of the state." Alberto Manguel by Robert Birnbaum, The Morning News
In 1983, he selected the stories for what is perhaps his best-known anthology Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature. His first novel, "News From a Foreign Country Came", won the McKitterick Prize in 1992.
He was appointed as the Distinguished Visiting Writer in the Markin-Flanagan Distinguished Writers Program at the University of Calgary from 1997 to 1999. Manguel was the Opening Lecturer at the "Exile & Migration" Congress, Boston University, in June 1999, and the Times Literary Supplement lecturer in 1997.
2000s
In 2000, Manguel moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of France, where he and his partner have purchased and renovated a medieval presbytery. Among the renovations is an oak-panelled library to house Manguel's 30,000 books.
Manguel held the Cátedra Cortázar at the Universidad de Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2007 and the S. Fischer Chair at the Freie Universität Berlin, in 2003. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège.
Manguel delivered the 2007 Massey Lectures which were later published as The City of Words and in the same year delivered the Northrop Frye-Antonine Maillet Lecture in Moncton, New Brunswick. He was the Pratt Lecturer at Memorial University of Newfoundland, in 2003.
In 2008, the Pompidou Center in Paris honoured Alberto Manguel as part of its 30th Anniversary Celebrations, by inviting him to set up a 3-month long program of lectures, film and round tables.
He writes a regular column for Geist magazine.
