The Underground Booksellers Tour

Bridge Books offers a unique experience that takes book lovers on guided walks through the inner-city’s literary history, tracing Joburg’s informal book trade.

Hosted by Griffin Shea, founder and owner of Bridge Books, an independent bookstore in Joburg CBD with a focus on African writers, the tour starts with a coffee at Bridge Books, based in one of the inner-city’s finest heritage buildings, before meandering through Joburg’s historic financial district.

The most recent tour included stops at Meischke’s Building, which housed Joburg’s first bookshop Thorolds and is now home to De Strong Tower, a supplier of Nigerian chapbooks (often described as the Nollywood of publishing), the Johannesburg City Library, Urban Ocean’s Pop-Up Arcade, a bookstore dedicated to Africa’s political memoirs and a market offering Southern African literature. The walk also made a stop at Ernest Oppenheimer Park where storyteller and author Baeletsi Tsatsi of Naane le Moya treated walkers to an African mythology storytelling session.

The Underground Booksellers of Joburg Tour dispels the myth that Joburg lacks a culture of reading by introducing walkers to the inner-city’s many independent bookstores and smaller second-hand bookdealers. A treat for bookworms!

Also operating out of Bridge Books is a wholesale book programme that supplies new books to the more than 70 small sellers in downtown Johannesburg.

The African Book Trust is Bridge Books’ social initiative that gets books into communities through libraries – neighbourhood libraries, school libraries and basically any libraries where books can be shared freely. Interested libraries need to email griffin@booktrust.co.za to register as beneficiaries.

To get details of the next tour, contact Bridge Books on 079 708 4461 info@bridgebooks.co.za.