Por Boyd Tonkin para The Independent
What would a bibliophile’s heaven look like? I think I have the answer now. April in Buenos Aires, and a gentle autumn morning in the lush and leafy neighbourhood of Palermo. Stroll, under the spreading tipa trees that kiss leaves across the avenues, from independent bookshop to independent bookshop – each one designed, stocked and staffed with the sort of passion for writing and reading (not to mention proper bars and cafés) that has all but vanished in many other cities.
Argentina’s capital boasts at least 350 bookshops, apparently more than in the whole of Brazil. They range from showpieces such as El Ateneo Gran Splendid, housed in a converted theatre, to the wood-panelled charm of a Palermo gem such as Eterna Cadencia – also, and not uniquely, home to a feisty independent publishing house. At Libros del Pasaje on Calle Thames (a block away from Jorge-Luis Borges’s house), owner José Nuñez – the son of booksellers – told me that, yes, he wants to stock and sell the best literature, but he won’t act the finger-wagging missionary. Yet you suspect that the warm welcome offered by Buenos Aires bookstores would itself lift literary horizons.
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In the book world, the wounds inflicted on the major firms by a wrecked currency and frozen economy created what publisher Octavio Kulesz calls «a big space underneath» the damaged giants. With property cheap and exports easy, many independents could survive and even thrive in the ruins.
