Our Lives Are Bound up in Books
The Impact of Stories Lost and Rediscovered. Reviewing ‘Cloud Cuckoo Land’ by Anthony Doerr
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus, the ibis-headed god Theuth recommends writing to enhance human memory. And Herodotus wrote The Histories, as he explained, “so that people would not forget.” But what happens when a book vanishes?
Until the age of print only a handful of copies of any given manuscript might exist. And any of those might succumb to age, wear,…
