CLARKES BOOKSHOP
Book Store in Cape Town

Clarke's Bookshop, established in 1956, is situated in the centre of Cape Town. We travel throughout Southern Africa and stock a wide variety of books published in Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and South Africa. We issue catalogues twice a year of new publications on Southern Africa with a small listing of out of print South African titles. We welcome wants lists and specific requests and will search for in print and out of print books on Southern Africa. Situated on Cape Town’s Long Street, which can turn from banal to barbarous overnight, Clarke’s Bookshop has always provided a cultural oasis that remained comfortingly unchanged, which was part of its charm. There are bookshops and then there is Clarke's Bookshop. Wooden shelves, a couple of glass cabinets and wall-to-wall books: old, new, rare, second-hand, out-of-print, handmade, printed on rural presses, mass-produced and remaindered from stores in the US, the place is an eclectic mix. There are books from Zimbabwe, Namibia, Mozambique, Swaziland, Lesotho, Botswana and SA. The second-hand and new-books sections have offerings from beyond the continent. Upstairs includes the Africana room locked because of the rare nature of many of the volumes and the packing room. With years spent working in bookshops in Paris and SA, she knows the business. The reason we are good is because everybody is very dedicated. She travels twice a year to Mozambique and the US, and once a year to the UK, to buy books. Bookstores Worth a Trip: Couldn't find anything at the airport to inspire you? That's just as well if you're going to be anywhere near these English-lanuage favorites, recommended by our well-travelled jury. These are not the sort of people who will shop at Clarke's Books. This literary wonderland in Long Street is reserved for true book-lovers. The shelves are laden, the wooden floors creak and there are deco chairs for you to curl up in while you page through your finds. Oddly enough, there can still be romance in being a bookseller, an embattled yet ennobled calling these days. A woman who owns a bookstore in Cape Town, South Africa, does just that. She is Henrietta Dax, proprietor of Clarke's Bookshop. In a pickup truck or car she wanders southern Africa, the lands south of the Zambezi River, as a sort of Marco Polo of books. Ms. Dax buys books at each shop with cash or through barter, books that are indigenous to the land she's in, and then sells them to customers throughout the world.