Sebald Lecture 2023: Alberto Manguel

The 2023 Sebald Lecture on Literary Translation was given on 23rd March by Alberto Manguel, the Argentinian-born, Canadian writer, translator and editor and acclaimed author of The Library at Night and A History of Reading.

His lecture 'Notes on the Art of Translation' explores Manguel’s thoughts on translation as a form of reading, of writing and of thinking. The translator is the secret sharer in the creation of a text, providing the original with what Borges called ‘a draft in another language’. Translation allows a text to come of age, generation after generation, and to enter a culture different from that of the original creator.

The Sebald Lecture 2023 was presented by the British Centre for Literary Translation (BCLT), in association with the National Centre for Writing and the British Library.

The Sebald Lecture is given annually on an aspect of literature in translation and is named after W.G. Sebald who set up BCLT in 1989. ‘Max’ was a German writer who opted to live in the UK and continue writing in German. His novels and essays include The Rings of Saturn, Austerlitz and On the Natural History of Destruction, and they established him as a leading writer of the 20th century.