“A lot of people will be interested in the famous bookshops of the world: Jorge Carrión has gone and visited them all. We can't travel right now, but we can travel in books.” – MARGARET ATWOOD

Why do bookshops matter? How do they filter our ideas and literature? In this inventive and highly entertaining extended essay, Jorge Carrion takes his reader on a journey around the world, via its bookshops. His travels take him to Shakespeare & Co in Paris, Wells in Winchester, Green Apple Books in San Francisco, Librairie des Colonnes in Tangier, the Strand Book Store in New York, provoking encounters with thinkers, poets, dreamers, revolutionaries, and readers.

Bookshops is the travelogue of a lucid and curious observer, filled with anecdotes and stories from the universe of writing, publishing, and selling books. A bookshop in Carrion's eyes is never just a place for material transaction; it is a meeting place for people and their ideas, a setting for world-changing encounters, a space that can transform lives.

Written in the midst of a worldwide recession, Bookshops examines the role of these spaces in today's ever-shifting climate of globalization, vanishing high streets, e-readers, and Amazon. But far from taking a pessimistic view of the future of the physical bookshop, Carrion makes a compelling case for hope, underlining the importance of these places and the magic that can happen there. A vital manifesto for the future of the traditional bookshop, and a delight for all who love them.

Translated from the Spanish by Peter Bush

Pages: 304, Year of Publication: 0911, Dimensions: 19.6x19.6cm