A new chapter in the evolution of Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens
The historian and author on adapting his phenomenal bestseller into graphic format, why science needs storytellers, and how Covid fuels threats to humanity
When it was first suggested to Yuval Noah Harari that he appear as a character in the illustrated version of Sapiens, his mega-bestselling brief history of humankind", which is about to be published in a graphic version, he did not jump at the idea. I vetoed it," he says over the phone from his home outside Tel Aviv. I try to keep myself mostly outside my books."
Sapiens covers the broad arc of our species' story, from the emergence of human cultures in Africa 70,000 years ago to our hyper-connected present, in 500 pages. It has been one of the most spectacular publishing successes of the past decade, selling more than 10m copies since it was translated into English in 2014, and its enormous popularity has turned a little-known Israeli history professor into one of the most influential public intellectuals on the planet.
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