Once upon a time … part of a Babylonian cuneiform tablet inscribed with the Gilgamesh flood epic. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images

The origins of writing date back some 5,000 years to the Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets used for commercial records. The story of literature begins around 1200 BCE with The Epic of Gilgamesh, which celebrated the adventures of the “writer-king” of Uruk in what is today Iraq. Martin Puchner’s history of writing, the printed word and storytelling takes the reader on a wonderfully rich tour through the places and texts that have shaped our lives and history. From an ancient Chinese library carved on nine-foot-high stone steles (“like walking through a labyrinth of words”), to tracing Goethe’s route through Sicily in search of “world literature”, a phrase coined by the German writer in 1827, and on to a contemporary conversation with Derek Walcott on St Lucia, this is a truly global survey.

Particularly poignant is his chapter on the Maya, whose remarkable books, written on bark and covered in jaguar skin, were nearly all burned by the invading Spaniards: “The history of literature is a history of book burnings – a testament to the power of written stories.”