Internationally acclaimed for her bestselling essay Infinity in a Reed, Vallejo has become one of the leading contemporary voices exploring the history of books, libraries, and reading. Her work combines rigorous classical scholarship with lyrical storytelling, transforming the survival of texts across centuries into a profoundly human story shaped by translators, librarians, teachers, readers, and forgotten guardians of knowledge.
Translated into more than 40 languages and published in over 70 countries, Vallejo’s books have earned major literary awards and global critical acclaim. Through the Arabic translations of Egyptian translator Mark Gamal, her reflections on Alexandria, memory, and the ancient world have found a particularly meaningful audience in the region that inspired much of her writing.
Speaking to Ahram Online during her visit to Cairo and Bibliotheca Alexandrina for World Book Day celebrations, Vallejo reflected on the enduring legacy of Alexandria, the power of translation, the future of reading in the digital age, and why books continue to represent one of humanity’s most enduring acts of resistance.
Ahram Online: What does presenting your work in Cairo during World Book Day celebrations mean to you?
Irene Vallejo: Papyrus was written during difficult years in my life, and writing became a kind of shelter for me. Gradually, the book turned into a tribute to the people who preserved books throughout history, and also to the books that, in many ways, helped preserve me.
I wrote it without expectations, convinced it would remain a quiet and modest work read by a small circle of people. The extraordinary reception it later received still feels unreal to me. To arrive now in Egypt, a country that occupies so many pages of the book and so much of my imagination, is deeply emotional.
Coming to Cairo and Alexandria feels like returning to the origins of the story I tried to tell. Celebrating World Book Day here carries enormous symbolic meaning. Meeting Egyptian writers, publishers, academics, and readers has been one of the most moving experiences of my literary life.
AO: What does it mean to have your work read in the Arab world, especially in Egypt?
IV: Seeing my books translated into Arabic has been profoundly meaningful because, in many ways, this essay was born as a tribute to the civilizations that emerged here on the banks of the Nile.
I feel enormous gratitude toward my translator, Mark Gamal, whose work gave these books a new life in another language. Translation is never a mechanical process. A translator recreates a text, allowing it to travel toward different rhythms, sounds, and cultural sensibilities.
Remarkably, Alexandria itself played such a central role in the history of translation. The ancient city transformed translation into an organized intellectual project that allowed civilizations to speak to one another. For this reason, the Arabic edition is the only translation for which I wrote a special foreword, as a gesture of admiration and gratitude.
In that foreword, I explain that the original idea for Papyrus came to me in Zaragoza, inside the Aljafería Palace, an extraordinary Islamic fortress from the era of Al-Andalus, once known as Qasr Al-Surur, the “Palace of Joy.” During a conversation there with a Spanish philosopher, the first spark of the book appeared. Coming to Egypt now feels like completing a circle and returning to the place where this intellectual adventure truly began.
AO: In Infinity in a Reed, how did you balance historical research with a narrative style accessible to general readers?
IV: I wanted to unite the pleasure of storytelling with the pursuit of knowledge. My years of academic research exposed me to a fascinating world filled with adventures, forgotten lives, dramatic journeys, and extraordinary anecdotes surrounding the survival of books. I felt these stories deserved to reach readers beyond the university.
Rather than writing a conventional academic study, I chose the form of the literary essay, flexible, exploratory, and open to biography, travel writing, suspense, cinema, and personal reflection. The research behind the book is rigorous, but I wanted the language itself to remain welcoming and alive.
When I was teaching, I noticed that students responded far more intensely to stories and human experiences than to abstract arguments. That observation shaped the structure of the book. I wanted to narrate the history of books the way ancient storytellers might have done, through suspense, atmosphere, and human emotion. In some sense, I hoped to create The Thousand and One Nights of books.
AO: How has the legacy of Alexandria shaped your understanding of the history of books?
IV: The ancient Library of Alexandria represents one of humanity’s boldest intellectual dreams: the attempt to gather the entirety of human knowledge and make it accessible to all who sought learning.
What fascinates me most is that Alexandria was not only collecting books. It was creating dialogue between civilizations. Messengers travelled across the known world searching for texts from Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Greeks, and many others. Translation became the bridge connecting different visions of the world.
That spirit of curiosity and openness remains one of Alexandria’s greatest legacies. In many ways, the dream survives today, not only in digital networks and the internet, which echo that ancient desire to gather and share knowledge, but also in public libraries, schools, universities, and cultural institutions across the world. Every library still carries something of Alexandria’s original utopian vision.
The modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina is a beautiful continuation of that dream. It stands as a reminder that the pursuit of knowledge remains one of humanity’s noblest ambitions.
AO: What key message do you hope readers take from your exploration of how knowledge travels across civilizations?
IV: Words are fragile things. They are made of air, and yet humanity has somehow managed to preserve them across thousands of years. That miracle fascinated me from the beginning.
Literary history often celebrates authors and creators, but we speak less about the people who preserved books: translators, librarians, teachers, copyists, booksellers, and ordinary readers who protected texts from censorship, war, destruction, and neglect. Without them, countless works would have disappeared forever.
I wanted readers to discover this immense chain of devotion stretching across centuries. Papyrus is ultimately a tribute to all those anonymous guardians of memory who helped preserve our stories, ideas, science, philosophy, and collective imagination.
AO: Your newly translated Arabic book is Manifesto for Reading. How does it differ from Papyrus?
IV: Manifesto for Reading is shorter, more direct, and more collective in spirit. While Papyrus explores the long historical journey of books, this new work focuses on why societies today should continue investing in reading, literacy, libraries, and cultural life.
Reading is not only a private pleasure. It strengthens concentration, imagination, empathy, and memory. It also plays an important social role by helping communities preserve shared experiences and confront trauma.
The book was commissioned by the Spanish Publishers’ Association, and I tried to answer a simple question: why should societies continue defending books and reading in the digital age? My answer is unequivocal. Supporting reading is an investment in human dignity, critical thinking, and collective memory.
AO: Your writing combines scholarship with literary storytelling. How do you balance fact and imagination when writing about history?
IV: Although I have written fiction and children’s literature, Papyrus is rooted in years of academic research into the origins of books and reading. Yet instead of adopting the cold neutrality often associated with academic writing, I wanted to write with emotion, gratitude, and wonder.
Books have shaped my life. They helped me confront fear, loneliness, uncertainty, and loss. So the essay became not only a historical exploration but also a personal tribute to the joy and companionship books can offer. Scholarship provides the foundation, but storytelling allows history to breathe and become emotionally meaningful.
AO: Do you see reading today as a form of resistance in a fast-paced digital world?
IV: Yes, although I prefer to emphasize coexistence rather than conflict between books and technology. The digital world itself emerged from earlier traditions of preserving and organizing knowledge. Even the creators of the internet drew inspiration from libraries and archives.
Throughout history, different formats have coexisted, including tablets, scrolls, and codices, each serving distinct purposes. I believe the same is true today. Printed books and digital screens are companions rather than enemies.
What concerns me more is the disappearance of patience and concentration. Reading requires active imagination and sustained attention. In a world dominated by distraction and constant acceleration, books offer something increasingly rare: silence, reflection, and the ability to inhabit time at our own pace. In that sense, reading can indeed become an act of resistance.
AO: Have you visited the Bibliotheca Alexandrina? How did the experience affect you?
IV: The new Bibliotheca Alexandrina engages brilliantly with the spirit of its ancient predecessor. It is not merely a library, but a vibrant cultural institution that encompasses museums, research centres, workshops, and educational programs.
Its architecture subtly echoes the ancient world while remaining entirely contemporary. The experience of speaking with researchers there, meeting readers from Alexandria, and exploring the building itself was unforgettable.
For the child in me who grew up fascinated by the myth of the lost Library of Alexandria, this visit felt almost unreal. It is one of the most moving moments of my literary life.
AO: How do you view the reception of your work among Arabic readers?
IV: The conversations I had with readers in Cairo and Alexandria deeply moved me. I was especially struck by the vitality and intellectual energy of the women readers, writers, and journalists I encountered during my visit.
During my research for Papyrus, I became increasingly aware that women played a far greater role in the intellectual history of antiquity than official narratives often acknowledge. I searched historical sources for traces of women philosophers, scientists, teachers, and writers whose names survived only in fragments.
Figures such as Hypatia and Cleopatra remind us that women have always participated in shaping intellectual and cultural life, even when history attempted to silence them. Recovering those forgotten voices became an essential part of my work.
AO: Could this visit inspire future writing projects?
IV: Absolutely. One of the stories that affected me most deeply during this trip was that of Taha Hussein, especially his memories as a blind child who later became one of the Arab world’s greatest intellectual figures. His story will appear in my next book.
Walking through places associated with his life alongside my translator, Mark Gamal, was unforgettable. Visiting Al-Azhar Mosque also left a strong impression on me.
Every journey changes the way we read and think. Travels do not end at airports. They continue in books, conversations, memories, and in the desire to keep learning.
AO: What advice would you give young readers trying to build a lasting relationship with books today?
IV: Stories surround us everywhere, especially through social media and digital technology. But many of these stories are brief and fleeting, disappearing almost as quickly as they appear. Books ask something different from us: patience, attention, reflection, and emotional involvement.
Books preserve our fears, discoveries, passions, and debates. They are among the greatest repositories of human memory ever created. We should also remember that books were once privileges reserved for tiny elites. The expansion of literacy, public education, libraries, and publishing transformed them into accessible objects capable of belonging to everyone.
I would encourage young people to embrace reading as an adventure, one that opens doors to imagination, empathy, and understanding. The enthusiastic reception of Papyrus across so many cultures convinces me that there still exists a quiet but vibrant community of people who continue to believe in the value of words, ideas, philosophy, and creativity. The world still needs them profoundly.
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