Each chapter of novelist and critic Alberto Manguel's Curiosity has a question for a title. In the hands of another writer, one might expect answers to the various queries (or at least suggestions for how the reader might go about answering them for herself), but Manguel's project is not to find answers. Instead, he explores questioning in and of itself, and what happens when a question is formulated. Curiosity, of course, isn't always satisfied, even if an answer does eventually appear.
Using Dante's Divine Comedy as his central text, Manguel (All Men Are Liars) explores nearly every aspect of human existence (from death to globalization to our relationships with our pets). He depicts Dante's journey from hell to heaven as an intellectual one, bound tightly to the moral and spiritual metamorphoses the Florentine poet undergoes. To Manguel, the formulation and expression (and, hopefully, the quenching) of our curiosity is the intellectually human endeavor. Dante's journey from sin (which ancient philosophers such as Aristotle believed could only come from ignorance) to virtue is paradigmatic of each person's groping in the darkness when faced with an unanswered question. But Dante isn't the only touchstone of Curiosity: Manguel brings his considerable knowledge and insight to bear on a handful of important thinkers, including David Hume, St. Augustine, Jorge Luis Borges and Rachel Carson. While the subject matter and prose may be a bit academic for casual readers, Curiosity is ultimately rewarding for those interested in an illuminating look at some of life's hardest questions. --Noah Cruickshank, marketing manager, Open Books, Chicago, Ill.