This is Not the End of the Book: A conversation curated by Jean-Philippe de Tonnac

It is currently almost impossible to get away from discussions of whether the book will survive the digital revolution. Blogs, tweets and newspaper articles appear daily on the subject, many of them repetitive, most of them admitting that the future is impossible to predict. In the midst of all this twittering, the thoughts of Jean-Claude Carri re and Umberto Eco come as a breath of fresh air. You couldn t imagine two people better placed to discuss the past, present and future of the book. Both of them avid book collectors with a deep understanding of history, they have also explored through their work, both written and visual, the many and varied ways in which ideas have been represented through the ages. This beautifully produced book, an object of desire in itself, is the transcription of a long conversation between the two men that ranges across a vast landscape of subjects, from what can be defined as the first book, to the idea of the library, the burning of books both accidental and deliberate, and what will happen to knowledge and memory when infinite amounts of information are available at the click of a mouse. En route there are delightful digressions into personal an

About the Author :
Jean-Claude Carri re is a writer, playwright and screenwriter, who recently collaborated with Michael Haneke on his award-winning film The White Ribbon. He has worked with many of the twentieth century's great directors including Peter Brook, Milos Forman, Bu uel and Jean-Luc Godard, and is the author of Please Mr Einstein. mberto Eco has written works of fiction, literary criticism and philosophy. He came to fame with his first novel The Name of the Rose, a major international bestseller, and has since published four other novels, along with many brilliant books of essays. His sixth novel, The Prague Cemetery, is due out from Harvill Secker in 2012. ean-Philippe de Tonnac is a writer and editor. His interviews with Umberto Eco, Jean-Claude Carri re and Stephen Jay Gould were published in the book Conversations About the End of Time. He is also the editor of several collections of essays, not yet translated into English, which include A Universal Dictionary of Bread and An Encyclopaedia of Knowledge and Belief.

Review :
A storming book. The next best thing to sitting in Umberto Eco's living room after dinner; a dream collection of lucid and fascinating discussions Hurrah for philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco and playwright and screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, who have come together to praise the medium... Fans of Eco and Carrière will be charmed As the conversation blossoms, the pair wander blissfully off topic into wider philosophical speculation about the nature of culture, for instance or humanity's curious relationship with past, present and future. And along the way there are plenty of pleasant diversions and anecdotes, taking in such diverse subject matter as Italian cinema forgotten French baroque poets, and the place of philosophy in contemporary European education systems. All this, naturally, informed by their love of books The dialogue between these two superbrains is freakishly compelling and covers everything from papyrus scrolls to e-readers... never fails to be enlightening and engaging... hooray for this brilliant book This book is a reminder that the satisfaction of working through even a relatively short book comes in part through confronting digressions, dead ends and distractions: the hallmark of conversation between friends, not of Internet speed-reading