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The Book of Lost Languages
- Author
- Daniel Harbour
- Narrator
- Daniel Harbour
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date
- 8 October 2026
- Run Time
- 13 hours 37 minutes
- Format
- Audiobook
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What to expect
‘Brilliantly conveys the thrill of connecting with the ancient world’ ALEX BELLOS
'All the drama of a political thriller, the intrigue of a detective story, and thechallenge of a cryptic crossword' DAVID CRYSTAL
'A remarkable uncovering of hidden treasures' IAN McMILLAN
An immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to life
Two hundred years ago, in the 1820s, history did not reach back further than the Iron Age. Less than a hundred years later, an extraordinary group of people had pushed our knowledge of the past back by 3,000 years. Sixty per cent of the timeline of recorded world history went from unreadable to read in a matter of decades.
Part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure, The Book of Lost Languages traces the decipherers who made this happen. In cracking lost languages, they recovered forgotten worlds.
We meet the novelist, saved from the French Revolution by his fictions, whose love of forgotten classics led him to decipher an ancient alphabet in a single night – and who then sifted through the king's coin collection to decipher a second, then a third. We meet the Irish cleric, banished to an insignificant parish, who had an almost magical intuition for lost languages. With time, wit and a good armchair, he cracked the writing of Mesopotamia. And we encounter the mysteriously inscribed 'dragon bones' unearthed by illiterate farmers that drove the decipherment of Old Chinese.
Moving through these discoveries, Daniel Harbour celebrates the minds behind them – their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. He reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them.
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.
Critics Review
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Daniel Harbour has done a masterful job at bringing decipherment to life. Rich in historical anecdote, with clear linguistic exposition – and entertaining puzzles – he brilliantly conveys the thrill of connecting with the ancient world. Harbour is an immensely knowledgeable guide and he has written a playful, deeply-researched book full of fascinating detail that will delight lovers of languages and ancient scripts
ALEX BELLOS, author of The Language Lover's Puzzle Book
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Plato said that writing was dangerous, linguists call it irrelevant, Harbour shows that it is brilliant and strange . . . The pace never lets up as the scripts keep coming, with new solutions still arriving as the book is being written. And Harbour doesn’t just tell us about decipherment, he teaches us how to do it ourselves, with ingenious puzzles that pull us into the story he is telling
JOSEPHINE QUINN, author of How the World Made the West
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There is so much more to decipherment than meets the eye of the uninitiated. It’s a gripping science that draws on a dizzying number of disciplines. Its heroes – those who gave our ancient ancestors their voices back – are more like superheroes, with the powers of tenacity, wisdom and encyclopaedic knowledge. You really have to suspend disbelief to take it all in. Daniel Harbour does an outstanding job of opening up this world with – as he describes one of his protagonists – ‘one eye for enchantment, the other for exactitude’. It’s an impossible book to put down
YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
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A compelling and authoritative global code-cracking adventure, with tales of historical decipherment so thrilling they set the pulse racing
EDWARD BROOKE-HITCHING, author of Phantom Atlas
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The Book of Lost Languages is a remarkable uncovering of hidden treasures that, once rediscovered, shine in the beautiful light of rediscovery
IAN McMILLAN, Presenter of The Verb
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A riveting biographical history of decipherment, told with exemplary clarity, and combining all the drama of a political thriller, the intrigue of a detective story, and the challenge of a cryptic crossword
DAVID CRYSTAL, Author of Crystal's Curiosity Cabinet
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The Book of Lost Languages is a joy and a gift to lovers of language, history and puzzles. Daniel Harbour makes the intricacies of decipherment readily accessible for newcomers, engrossing them through a relaxed tone of authorial voice, a judicious inclusion and exclusion of details, and practical ‘hands on’ sections throughout. He demonstrates both his considerable talent as a writer (with many pithy phrases and punchy sentences demanding a reread for full delectation) and his immense knowledge of decipherment and adjacent fields
DANNY BATE, author of Why Q Needs U
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Daniel Harbour's The Book of Lost Languages tells the gripping tale of the individuals who pushed back the dawn of history by 3,000 years. These were the brilliant decipherers who groped their way into lost linguistic universes using every clue at their disposal, and what makes their story so palpitating is that luck and timing so often played a part in their breakthroughs. Luck and timing, therefore, may be all that separate today's decipherers from unlocking those universes still closed to us
LAURA SPINNEY, author of Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global
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Details
- Author
- Daniel Harbour
- Narrator
- Daniel Harbour
- Duration
- 13 hours 37 minutes
- Release Date
- 8 October 2026
- ISBN
- 9781526646002
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Publishing
- Genre
- Historical and comparative linguistics
Synopsis
Bloomsbury presents The Book of Lost Languages: An Epic Quest to Decipher the Past, written and read by Daniel Harbour.‘Brilliantly conveys the thrill of connecting with the ancient world’ ALEX BELLOS'All the drama of a political thriller, the intrigue of a detective story, and thechallenge of a cryptic crossword' DAVID CRYSTAL'A remarkable uncovering of hidden treasures' IAN McMILLANAn immersive journey into the art of decipherment and the lost past that emerges when ancient scripts are brought back to lifeTwo hundred years ago, in the 1820s, history did not reach back further than the Iron Age. Less than a hundred years later, an extraordinary group of people had pushed our knowledge of the past back by 3,000 years. Sixty per cent of the timeline of recorded world history went from unreadable to read in a matter of decades.Part detective story, part history, part linguistic adventure, The Book of Lost Languages traces the decipherers who made this happen. In cracking lost languages, they recovered forgotten worlds.We meet the novelist, saved from the French Revolution by his fictions, whose love of forgotten classics led him to decipher an ancient alphabet in a single night – and who then sifted through the king's coin collection to decipher a second, then a third. We meet the Irish cleric, banished to an insignificant parish, who had an almost magical intuition for lost languages. With time, wit and a good armchair, he cracked the writing of Mesopotamia. And we encounter the mysteriously inscribed 'dragon bones' unearthed by illiterate farmers that drove the decipherment of Old Chinese.Moving through these discoveries, Daniel Harbour celebrates the minds behind them – their strengths and quirks, their brilliance and pettiness, their inexplicable flashes of insight. He reveals the astonishing engine that drives decipherment: when we unravel forgotten scripts, we connect across millennia with the minds that created them.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.
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