Describes and visualizes over 1,200 magical lands found in literature and film, discussing such exotic realms as Atlantis, Tolkien's Middle Earth, and Oz.

Throughout the ages, writers have created an astonishing diversity of imaginary places, worlds of enchantment, horror and delight. This monumental book, now more comprehensive than ever, unites them in a single volume. A national bestseller when first published in 1980, this unique and endlessly entertaining guidebook takes readers on a tour of more than 1,200 imaginary cities, islands, countries, and continents, all invented by storytellers from Homer's day to our own. From Atlantis to Dracula's Castle, Middle Earth to Baskerville Hall, Utopia to Earthsea, here are worlds enough and more for every reader, fantasy fan, and passionate browser. And now it includes dozens of invaluable new entries and illustrations, including Eco's Abbey of the Rose, and Peter Carey's Etica. Among the lands are those of Lewis Carroll, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, L. Frank Baum, C.S. Lewis, John Lennon, Gilbert & Sullivan and Graham Greene. Written with wit and brilliance, the book is also a visual delight with more than 200 original illustrations and maps by Graham Greenfield, and James Cook, and new illustrations by award-winning artist Ken Nutt.

In this gorgeously imagined novel, a journalist interviews those who knew—or thought they knew—Alejandro Bevilacqua, a brilliant, infuriatingly elusive South American writer and author of the masterpiece, In Praise of Lying. But the accounts of those in his circle of friends, lovers, and enemies become increasingly contradictory, murky, and suspect. Is everyone lying, or just telling their own subjective version of the truth? As the literary investigation unfolds and a chorus of Bevilacqua’s peers piece together the fractured reality of his life, thirty years after his death, only the reader holds the power of final judgment. In All Men Are Liars, Alberto Manguel pays homage to literature’s inventions and explores whether we can ever truly know someone, and the question of how, by whom, and for what, we ourselves will be remembered.

By the award-winning author of A History of Reading "For me, words on a page give the world coherence--Words tell us what we, as a society, believe the world to be--I believe there is an ethic of reading--a commitment that is both political and private in the act of turning the pages. And I believe that sometimes, beyond the author's intentions and beyond the reader's hopes, a book can make us better and wiser." Through personal stories and literary reflections, in a style rich in humour and gentle erudition, Manguel leads us, the readers, to reflect upon the pleasures and responsibilities of reading, and the links that exist between the world we live in, and the words we live amongst. Into the Looking-Glass Wood is a voyage into the subversive heart of words - a voyage fired by the author's humanity and extraordinary breadth of vision.

An alphabetically arranged, cross-referenced dictionary of mythical, legendary, and famous literary places briefly describing the origin, location, and major characteristics of each place.