BazaarESCAPE in a decidedly serendipitous Grapes of Wrath and fashion. The bookstore was born Hemingway’s The after two college mates spent a Old Man and the Sea. week in Santorini in the spring of www.atlantisbooks.org 2002. Wowed by the island and nourished by bottles of wine, they LIBRAIRIE DES decided their destiny rested here. COLONNES One store and a fresh blue coat of TANGIER, MOROCCO paint later, Atlantis was born. Walking into this Moving from its first location bookstore, infused as beneath a Venetian castle in 2004, it is with the singular Atlantis today finds home in a fragrances of the (This page) The Librería quintessential old village house in Maghreb, is like El Ateneo Grand Splendid, Buenos Aires; the heart of Main Marble Road, stepping back into a large frame of sepia. Librairie des a books display at Oia. You’ll recognise Oia as the Colonnes’s iconic status is due in part to its beautiful 10 Corso Como in Milan. picture-perfect sunset address of architecture, dressed in distinctive maroon and grey strokes (Opposite page) The façade of Librairie des choice, and Atlantis plays this up to the hilt with frequent and accented in the country’s French colonial past. The Colonnes in Tangier; sunset readings on its sea-view terrace. In this sanctuary for bookshop’s visage is classic in every sense—striking columns, ONE FOR Atlantis Books’s sea-view readers and writers, the pervading bohemian vibe extends to graceful curves, and evocative dark wood. Within des terrace, Santorini. terrace-side literary festivals, including the Caldera Arts & Colonnes, owners Pierre Bergé and Simon-Pierre Hamelin THE BOOKS Literature Festival, food soirées, and film screenings. The nourish an ethic that includes both quiet reading corners as brainchild of original creators Craig Walzer and Oliver Wise, well as a charmingly ramshackle library-in-flux Journey the world one bookstore at a time as LIBRERÍA EL ATENEO Atlantis’s small printing press, Paravion, creates sewn, atmosphere—books strewn about in places, shelves and GRAND SPLENDID handmade books (both classics—an Emily Dickinson poetry cabinets aligned to their own will, readers and rummagers author Siddharth Dasgupta picks the BUENOS AIRES, collection and a Walter Benjamin translation included—and scouring through the dark wood in their hunt for a hidden must-visit ones ARGENTINA fresh short story collections) in light, postcard-size booklet gem. Be warned though, the English selection here is At the El Ateneo form, before shipping them out to the world. Tip: Don’t miss minimal at best; French and Spanish writers, together with bookshop, housed Atlantis’s bevy of first editions, including Steinbeck’s The a robust Arab presence, rule the roost. Stay for the history 10 CORSO COMO MILAN, ITALY in an old theatre in though; stay for stories of the Trust the Italians to merge words with high fashion and downtown Buenos Aires, you get the slight suspicion that famous writers, like Bernard- style. 10 Corso Como, conceptualised in 1990 by former you’re trapped in a David Lynch film, held prisoner to its Henri Lévy and the Moroccan- fashion editor and publisher Carla Sozzani, is as much a atmosphere of dark drama, age-old grandeur, and present- Indian Tahir Shah, who have bookstore as a cultural phenomenon. Though Sozzani day resplendence. El Ateneo’s origins can be traced back made Tangier home; stay for the structured the address almost as a living magazine where all the way to 1919, when it was the Teatro Grand frequent book readings and film thoughtfully selected books, food, fashion, music, art, and Splendid, and then 1929, when it assumed its cinema screenings. Stay mostly, though, design are filtered through her editorial choices, Como’s avatar. Today, the stage has slipped with quiet dignity into for the ghosts of Beckett and heart remains its bookshop. Accented in white and with its role of a reading area that looks out at all the theatrical Boroughs that still seem fixated sunlight streaming in through large windows, it offers you majesty and flamboyance on view. Leafing through words on des Colonnes’s once-upon-a- one of the world’s best selections of art, architecture, design, by Borges and Guido, it’s hard to take your eyes away time charms. fashion, and photography. The vibe here, though effortlessly from the frescoed ceilings, the plush stage curtains full of www.librairie-des-colonnes.org elegant, is abuzz with people and conversation. You’re ancient pride, and ornamental regalia that reveals itself in greeted with soft jazz and deep lounge sounds, and crests embellished on walls and spiralled columns filled ILLITERATI CAFÉ surrounded by a changing selection of writers, musicians, with murmurs of history. Tip: Head into one of the DHARAMSALA, INDIA artists, and photographers—all captured in stunning black theatre boxes (now serving as reading rooms) for an In the larger Dharamsala region of and white portraits. You may browse, you may buy, you experience where antiquity, drama, and silent theatricality North India, kissed by the Kangra may have a seat on a couch while drowning yourself in form part of the narrative. Valley and looking out at the not- music… and you may even bump into Sozzani herself. On www.yenny-elateneo.com/local/grand-splendid too-distant Himalayan ranges, the slight chance that you need variety, you could always magic is afoot. Illiterati, in the visit Como’s larger family—the adjoining Galleria Carla ATLANTIS BOOKS SANTORINI, GREECE Tibetan enclave of McLeod Ganj, Sozzani, the courtyard Garden Café, or even the inviting The waters of the Aegean Sea, those white, cliff-perched homes is more a café than a bookstore, intimacy of the 3 Rooms Hotel. of the Greek isles, and the unexpected joys of a hidden, but its balcony views of the COURTESY FLICKR/HERNÁN PIÑERA; 10 CORSO COMO; WILL BRADY; LIBRAIRIE DES COLONNES. COLONNES. DES LIBRAIRIE BRADY; WILL COMO; CORSO 10 PIÑERA; FLICKR/HERNÁN COURTESY www.10corsocomo.com independent bookstore—at Atlantis, all three come together verdant valley and treasure trove ä 000 000 BazaarESCAPE (From left) Illiterati fiction titles, fiction favourites, and rarities to be found and Miller included. This being Paris, a certain frozen Café, Dharamsala; a gondola used as a anywhere. The tranquillity of sitting back on an armchair and romance is deeply ingrained within Shakespeare’s book display at sipping a glass of red wine while reading up on your onward assemblage of a ramshackle façade, the scrawled manifesto Libreria Acqua Alta journey through Europe via all the travel knowledge at hand is at the entrance, a treasure trove of tiny rooms and secluded in Venice. immeasurable. Despite its sprawling dimensions, the mood reading spots, and walls, stairs, and doorways showcasing here remains intimate. Named after the only colony the Danes scribbled literature all their own. Take my advice: ever established in India, Tranquebar stays true to the Grab something from the café next door, take a seat on exploratory ethic of its Coromandel Coast origins. the porch’s tumbledown bench, say a silent hello to the www.tranquebar.net Notre Dame just across the Seine flowing by in front of you, and allow 37 rue de la Bûcherie to whisk you away SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY PARIS, FRANCE to a literary nirvana. Though Shakespeare and Company might be something www.shakespeareandcompany.com of a predictable inclusion, it still remains a deeply personal one. I’ll readily agree that THE ABBEY BOOKSHOP PARIS, FRANCE it’s overrun with tourists, many with not Filled with quirky charm, cosy little the littlest interest in literature. But when nooks and crannies, and the ramshackle you’re in the company of Shakespeare’s romance of Shakespeare & Company, legendary yellow and green visage, mixing but sans the tourists and teenagers out to it up with the Beat Poets of the ’40s and grab a selfie, The Abbey Bookshop is of words that bookend the seating Frizzio, and his equally up-for-it staff, the Lost Generation of the ’20s, nothing literary deliciousness served on a typically arrangements make it a must-visit. The When you’re in the rubber boots in tow, to switch into else seems to matter. Nostalgia, myth, Parisian platter. This quintessential key word at Illiterati is atmosphere: The action: Books are swiftly relocated from stories, and fables are Shakespeare’s calling French bookstore is, ironically enough, elegant French chairs and sofas nourish company of floors and low-level shelves to an assembly cards, and they involve a gamut of cultural owned and steered by Canadian Brian it, the fresh northern breeze fosters it, Shakespeare’s legendary of makeshift spaces—bathtubs, higher crusaders and literary vanguards: The Spence. You’ll leap over books lying and the interesting selection of shelves, a rowing boat, and even a venerated founder George Whitman, its haphazardly on the floor, jump to reach spirituality, travel, tantra, philosophy, yellow and green visage, gondola included! Even in dry weather, angelic current owner Sylvia Whitman, for a classic stored near the ceiling, and and India-centric books cement all of it mixing it up with the Acqua Alta spoils you with magic—that and books by writers of the ilk of generally find yourself COURTESY ABHINAV CHANDEL; FLICKR/MARTI AND TOOMAS HINNOOSAR; TOBIAS STAEBLER; ABBEY BOOKSTORE. ABBEY STAEBLER; TOBIAS HINNOOSAR; TOOMAS AND FLICKR/MARTI CHANDEL; ABHINAV COURTESY together. The Dalai Lama makes a bench by an open door, barely a breath Hemingway, Joyce, Ginsberg, Burroughs, (Top) The entrance to the wrapped in the nostalgia frequent appearance on the bookshelves Beat Poets of the ’40s removed from the canal, being a Abbey Bookstore. (Below) the afforded by old volumes courtyard outside and the tables, as do journeys into and the Lost Generation case in point.