In this gorgeously imagined novel, a journalist interviews those who
knew--or thought they knew--Alejandro Bevilacqua, a brilliant,
infuriatingly elusive South American writer and author of the
masterpiece, In Praise of Lying. But the accounts of those in his
circle of friends, lovers, and enemies become increasingly
contradictory, murky, and suspect. Is everyone lying, or just telling
their own subjective version of the truth? As the literary investigation
unfolds and a chorus of Bevilacqua's peers piece together the fractured
reality of his life, thirty years after his death, only the reader holds
the power of final judgment.
In All Men Are Liars, Alberto Manguel pays homage to literature's
inventions and explores whether we can ever truly know someone, and the
question of how, by whom, and for what, we ourselves will be remembered.