The Book of Lost Languages
An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past
Will be published approx. on 8. October 2026
Book
Hardback
496 pages
978-1-5266-4597-5 (ISBN)
Description
An immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to life
For centuries, the world's earliest writing stood unread. Only through the work of decipherers did their languages begin to speak again, revealing lives that were long forgotten.
The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure. It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt's hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China's most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain. From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds.
As it moves through these discoveries, the book celebrates the minds behind them - their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. It reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them. Through these connections, we have extended our knowledge of written history by thousands of years.
The result is an exhilarating story of people and politics, dogma and doubt, genius and ingenuity, and of the beguiling artistry behind some of the greatest puzzles ever created.
For centuries, the world's earliest writing stood unread. Only through the work of decipherers did their languages begin to speak again, revealing lives that were long forgotten.
The Book of Lost Languages is part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure. It traces the epic journeys of decipherment, from the international strife that unearthed the Rosetta Stone, key to Egypt's hieroglyphs, to the drunken wager that unsealed Old Persian, and from the malaria cure that revealed China's most ancient writing to the proof by chocolate that Mayan writing had been unlocked behind the Cold War's Iron Curtain. From earliest victories to latest findings, Harbour chronicles the remarkable mental feats that have restored forgotten worlds.
As it moves through these discoveries, the book celebrates the minds behind them - their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. It reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them. Through these connections, we have extended our knowledge of written history by thousands of years.
The result is an exhilarating story of people and politics, dogma and doubt, genius and ingenuity, and of the beguiling artistry behind some of the greatest puzzles ever created.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Illustrations
integrated images
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 153 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-5266-4597-5 (9781526645975)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Daniel Harbour is a leading expert on writing systems and formal linguistics and a Fellow of the British Academy. For 25 years, he has worked with speakers of endangered languages from the United States to the South Caucasus, helping preserve their knowledge for future generations. Raised in Australia and educated at Oxford and MIT, he is one of the few people alive, outside tribal elders, familiar with the Kiowa language of Oklahoma. A research professor at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and University Paris 8, he regularly works in eight languages and is conversant in several more. He lives in London.