‘Borges and the Impossibility of Writing’ Is Topic of Biannual Finzi-Contini Lecture

On Wednesday, Feb. 3, Alberto Manguel, internationally acclaimed essayist, novelist, anthologist, translator and editor, will deliver the Finzi-Contini Lecture under the auspices of the Whitney Humanies Center (WHC).

Manguel’s talk, titled “Borges and the Impossibility of Writing,” will take place at 5 p.m. in the WHC auditorium, 53 Wall St. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, call Susan Stout at 203-432-6556 or e-mail susan.stout@yale.edu.

An officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters, Manguel is the bestselling author of “With Borges,” “A Dictionary of Imaginary Places” (co-authored by Gianni Guadalupi) and “A History of Reading,” which traces the 6000-year-old record of the written word. His book, “A Reader on Reading,” was published to coincide with the Finzi-Contini Lecture. Manguel has written five novels, two of which are available in English: “News from a Foreign Country Came” and “Stevenson under the Palm Trees.”

The Finzi-Contini Lectureship was endowed in 1990 by the Calabresi family, including Guido Calabresi, former dean of the Yale Law School, in memory of his mother, Bianca Maria Finzi-Contini Calabresi. The biannual lectureship sponsors a distinguished lecturer in the field of comparative literature, broadly defined.