A piece in World Literature Today earlier this year described some of South Africa’s “out-of-the-way bookshops” — the kind of places you go to specifically, not the ones you pass on the way to somewhere else. Several of them are in Cape Town, and several of them are our clients.
Clarke’s Bookshop
Clarke’s has been on Long Street since 1957, when Tony Clarke opened it as a secondhand bookshop. Under apartheid, it sold books the government had banned. In 2009, the Irish Independent named it one of the ten best bookshops in the world. Henrietta Dax, who started working there in 1981 and became sole owner in 1998, still runs it. Clarke’s was one of the two shops Papyrus was originally built for.
Kalk Bay Books
Founded in 2006 in the seaside village of Kalk Bay, it’s been described as the bookshop with the most beautiful view in the world — it sits metres from the sea. Audrey Rademeyer runs a shop that hosts book launches, readings, and talks on a regular basis. They’ve been on Papyrus for over a decade.
The Bookmark and The Book Cottage
Both in Hermanus, both independent, both quite different. The Bookmark is known for its distinctive beach-hut shelving and a hand-picked range of titles. The Book Cottage carries a broader selection, including a strong South African section. Both use Papyrus.
Why it matters
Independent bookshops are not just retail outlets. They’re places where people discover books they didn’t know they were looking for. They employ people who read. They contribute to the character of the streets they sit on.
For us, supporting independents has always been part of what Papyrus does. The same software that runs Bargain Books’ 87 stores runs a single shop in Kalk Bay. That was a deliberate choice, and we don’t intend to change it.