What I do remember is that the booksellers at that time, the last year of the 80s, or perhaps the first months of the 90s, were in the first block, the one that leads to Plaza San Martín, and they offer their books in in the middle of the street, on the sidewalks, on improvis planks, or simply on the ground, plac on top of some cover that protect them from contact with the roughness of those busy sidewalks. I remember the feeling when I arriv at that kind of little paradise of paper, black ink and covers of different colours, designs and sizes: I was simply enthrall with all those books display there, I went from here to there directing my gaze towards suggestive titles of authors that I didn’t know or towards others that I was barely getting to know,
Changing and Open
I keep in my memory with the clarity of nostalgia for times gone by the image of the first book I bought there. It was a novel by Hermann b2b leads Hesse , a German writer (later naturaliz Swiss) whom I was reading with special enthusiasm in those years. Demian. History of the Youth of Emil Sinclair was the book that fell into my hands after the usual haggling and disbursement – with the triumphant ruction of a few soles – of the little money that I probably had left after a Friday night party.
Each Semester at the
It must have been 10 or 12 soles, a little more, perhaps, but in no case more than fifteen: quite a bargain. It was a book with a carefully lin cover, but with some wear and tear, and stamp with a photograph of the great Hesse in his youth (an old jacket with rebellious slant flaps), with leaves with an incipient yellowish tone and publish under the always reliable Alianza seal. itorial. I became a regular visitor to Numbers Lists that group of crowd booksellers and readers who came eagerly in search of long-await titles or simply to see what there was: Quilca always surpris with some novelty or rarity .
