An enchanting book about books: a beautiful hardcover Pocket Classics anthology of stories that testify to the irresistible power of the written word

The characters in the delightful stories collected here range all the way from the ink-stained medieval monks in Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose to the book-besotted denizens of Ali Smiths Public Library and Other Stories. In these pages readers are invited to enter the interior lives of librarians in Lorrie Moores Community Life and Elizabeth McCracken’s “Juliet” and are ushered into a host of unusual libraries, including the infinite rooms of Jorge Luis Borgess The Library of Babel and a secret library in Helen Oyeyemis Books and Roses.

Books exert their power in mysterious ways: an attempt by the military leaders of an imaginary nation to censor all of literature goes awry in Italo Calvinos A General in the Library and Julio Cortzars mesmerizing The Continuity of Parks dramatizes the merging of the world inside and outside of a book. In Stories of Books and Libraries, a dazzling array of writers including Evelyn Waugh, Colette, Walter Benjamin, Isaac Babel, Teffi, and Ray Bradbury pay tribute to books and the magical places that house them.

Everyman’s Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket.