The Shores of Wisdom

About the Book

In "The Shores of Wisdom", Derek Adie Flower gives a delightful story of the rise and fall of the Ancient Library of Alexandria - the world´s power of knowledge and culture twenty-three centuries ago. Flower tells the story with a unique style, giving us glimpses of the forces which made the place prosper with great philosophers and scientists (Euclid, Archimedes, Eratosthenes...) and the causes of decline when politics and religion became in conflict with rationality. Flower displays his enthusiasm for the city by the hope for the future in the new project of building modern Bibliotheca Alexandria. As a graduate of the University of Alexandria in modern time, I, too, hope that the future will reach the greatness of the past, but with a renaissance in modern science and knowledge. The book is indeed an enjoyable piece to read. Prof. Ahmed H. Zewail 1998 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. Egypt

About the Author

Writer and broadcaster, Derek Flower spent his childhood and early youth in Egypt where he enjoyed a multilingual education before graduating at Oxford with an honours degree in Modern Languages. His lifelong interest in Egyptology and the opening of the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina prompted him to write the story of the Ancient Library of Alexandria, the world’s first great centre of culture, in a book that reads more like a captivating historical novel than the academic and well documented treatise it is. Derek Flower lives in Italy with his wife, Frédérique, but still spends several weeks a year in Egypt. He is also involved in the promotion of a European cultural and ecumenic centre at the historic Imperial Abbey of Farfa, north of Rome.