This is Not the End of the Book by Umberto Eco & Jean-Claude Carrière

The perfect gift for book lovers: a beautifully designed hardcover in which two of the world’s great men have a delightfully rambling conversation about the future of the book in the digital era, and decide it is here to stay.

‘The book is like the spoon: once invented, it cannot be bettered.’ Umberto Eco These days it is almost impossible to get away from discussions of whether the ‘book’ will survive the digital revolution.

Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles on the subject appear daily, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting they don’t know what will happen. Amidst the twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carrière and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. There are few people better placed to discuss the past, present and future of the book. Both avid book collectors with a deep understanding of history, they have explored through their work the many and varied ways ideas have been represented through the ages.

This thought-provoking book takes the form of a long conversation in which Carrière and Eco discuss everything from what can be defined as the first book to what is happening to knowledge now that infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal anecdote. We find out about Eco’s first computer and the book Carrière is most sad to have sold.

Readers will close this entertaining book feeling they have had the privilege of eavesdropping on an intimate discussion between two great minds. And while, as Carrière says, the one certain thing about the future is that it is unpredictable, it is clear from this conversation that, in some form or other, the book will survive.

Umberto Eco (1932–2016) wrote fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. His first novel, The Name of the Rose, was a major international bestseller. His other works include Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, The Prague Cemetery and Numero Zero along with many brilliant collections of essays.

Jean-Claude Carrière is a writer, playwright and screenwriter. He is notably the co-author of Conversations About the End of Time (with Stephen Jay Gould, Umberto Eco, etc.) He has also worked with Peter Brook, Milos Forman, Buñuel, Godard and the Dalaï Lama.

This is Not the End of the Book
A conversation curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac
By Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carrière
Language & Literary Studies
Paperback
ISBN 9780099552451
2012
Vintage Publ.
352 pages
$24.99

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This is Not the End of the Book
Umberto Eco & Jean-Claude Carrière

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