A Few Out-of-the-Way Bookshops in South Africa

Tiny bookstores are thriving across South Africa. J. L. Powers offers a guided tour of some of her favorites.

As the Atlantic Ocean gives way to the Indian Ocean, one of the unexpected joys of traveling by car to the small inland dorps in the South African interior or to coastal towns are the many small bookstores in surprising locations.

You should not expect them to have websites, beyond a social media presence (at best).

You should expect most of them to be used bookstores or bookstores that combine used books with new books. Even though, as a publisher, I chafe at used books (it diminishes our profits substantially), as a reader, I delight in them.

You can expect some of these bookstores to be little more than a table set up on the sidewalk or in a dusty parking lot. You might be surprised at what you’ll find.

You can also expect that, if you are not from South Africa, you’ll find books that you can’t find anywhere else on earth. I love being able to poke around until I find a long out-of-print book—such as The Little Karoo, a collection of short stories by Pauline Smith, first published in 1925. I bought a copy recently in a used bookshop in Kleinmond and recognized my own childhood landscape and the hard-bitten but religious people of West Texas in Smith’s depiction of the Afrikaners who settled in the Karoo, a mountainous desert region of South Africa.

One of my favorite bookstores in an out-of-the-way place is Kalk Bay Books, located (unsurprisingly) in Kalk Bay, on the Western Cape peninsula. This region is better known for penguins than books, but Kalk Bay Books is well worth a stop. A small village with a bustling main street, Kalk Bay is lined with small cafés and shops, on one side, and the ocean on the other side just beyond the railway tracks. It’s a hipster, touristy town that reminds me a little bit of a small California seaside town with hippy vibes, shops selling beads and long Indian-print skirts, and the scent of marijuana in the air.

I spoke with Simone Rademeyer, daughter of the owner, Audrey Rademeyer, about the bookstore and her mother’s aesthetic. “My mom wants it to feel like you were walking into someone’s lounge,” Simone said. “We stock what we love, which is often not what sells. Fox 8, by George Saunders, is the book she is most likely to try to hand-sell—a beautiful story that connects the boundaries between humans and the environment. This book is a good representation of the bookshop. Story is the primary vessel of human communication, and we are working on making the space better to facilitate community conversations, both literary and otherwise.”

Story is the primary vessel of human communication, and we are working on making the space better to facilitate community conversations, both literary and otherwise.”—Simone Rademeyer

Dustcovers Bookshop, a secondhand bookshop in Nieu-Bethesda, is located in a tiny village in the heart of the Karoo Desert. Nieu-Bethesda is also not known for books. Instead, it is known for fossils that show Africa had a type of early dinosaur as well as for an artist named Helen Martins, famous for her art featuring owls, stained glass, and strange statues of people and animals created out of cement. The dusty town—literally dusty because it’s located in a desert and all its streets are dirt rather than paved—is also a cash-only town, so be sure to bring plenty of rands before you arrive. Dustcovers is primarily a used bookstore, but it hosts events, and you might be lucky enough to see a one-of-a-kind book event with writers who rarely venture to the trendy bookstores of Cape Town or Joburg.

On the way to the coast from Cape Town is the cutest bookshop in the world: Liberty Books. The store, owned by Christy Weyer, a self-described “escapee from academia,” specializes in South African literature and crime novels. Located in the Peregrine Farm Stall in Grabouw, South Africa, you can shop for used and new books; buy a homemade pecan pie or freshly baked bread; buy ripe produce and local wines and cheese; and sip on a cappuccino. I visited with my friend Colleen Higgs, publisher of Modjaji Books, who said some of her authors have had wonderful launches at Liberty, with catering and local wines from Peregrine Farm Stall itself.

One of the booksellers, Christina, told us, “We pride ourselves on giving used books a new life, but we still have a new bookstore feel.” And she’s right! As you walk into Liberty Books, you’ll notice the perfect spot to curl up with a cat and a book. The cat—“Cleopatra, her royal highness”—is very much in possession of the bookstore. Christina started working at the bookstore in 2017 and said that for a girl growing up in a small town in South Africa, “a girl who wears vintage clothes from the 1950s, with big hair and big hats—to have a space where you can exist and breathe . . .” She trailed off, then added, “This is a second home. You come in and get wrapped in books. There’s a space for everyone, everything, and every book. And a cat might come and sit on your lap while you read.”

Last but not least, an urban bookstore in Johannesburg might not sound like an “out-of-the-way” bookstore, but Bridge Books in the central business district (cbd) of Johannesburg is not the first place I’d go to find a bookshop in that big city. In fact, to be honest, I’ve fallen prey to the common perception that the CBD is a “no-go” area due to crime. It turns out, however, there are bookstores galore—upward of sixty used, rare, and new bookstores within a kilometer of one another. These include street sellers who set out stands of used books next to informal sellers of vegetables, toys, used clothing, and other items. These booksellers have banded together to brand this the “Literary District” of Johannesburg, and Griffin Shea, owner of Bridge Books, has put together an Underground Booksellers Walking Tour of the Joburg Literary District. Bridge Books, which specializes in African literature, is a must-visit, and I personally can’t wait to take his walking tour.

Tiny bookstores—including the urban and rural tabletops full of used books manned by entrepreneurs and placed outdoors in locations where tourists or shoppers happen to wander by—are thriving across South Africa. This is just a small taste of a few of them. If you find yourself there, enjoy the thrill of discovery.

El Paso, Texas