[BHE 391] Johannesburg, South Africa

Kenneth here.

I found myself in Johannesburg in February after a couple of wonderful weeks on holiday in Namibia. I hadn’t had much luck in finding a bookshop in Windhoek (the only one that I saw was shut on the day we went past) so I was delighted to get a couple of recommendations from the Singaporean concierge at the Four Seasons Westcliff where we were staying.

The first bookshop was Exclusive Books, a large chainstore with outlets in several locations. We visited the store in the Hyde Park Corner shopping mall (which also featured the Red Chamber restaurant, a necessary stop for some Chinese food after too many days without soy sauce.)

Exclusive Books had a large coffeeshop, and a proper restaurant too, and still had space for plenty books. It had several shelves of African authors, many of whom I had not come across before.

A couple of days later, we were at the Sandton City mall and visited the branch there too, it was very similar, but as I recall, did not have a restaurant inside.

The other bookshop that we visited was L’Elephant Terrible, located in a cluster of shops, galleries, and restaurants called 44 Stanley. In this second hand bookshop the shelves were crammed full of books, much like I have them at home. I was really happy to find a few unusual books there.