Selling the family library? Photograph: Sean Smith
When I moved to Buenos Aires last year, I wanted to conquer Spanish one book at a time, so I went in search of used bookshops. Used books may not appeal to some, but I've always loved them. What better way is there of unearthing cultural treasures? After schlepping from one to another I began to ask myself why I could find nothing but dusty copies from the 60s. There seemed to be nothing about contemporary Latin America at all. Why were they all so old?
Then it occurred to me that it's all down to purchasing power. Take Harry Potter - as plenty did both in Argentina and the UK. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows sells for 108 pesos, which corresponds to the £17.99 list price in the UK - though you can find it for a tenner online. But the average income in the UK is £30,000, while in Argentina it's only the same number of pesos. So buying a copy of the latest Harry Potter costs an Argentine 3% of their yearly earnings. Over in the UK it's the price of a few cups of coffee.
And it's not just Harry Potter. The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, for example, is 90 pesos (£15) in Argentina and £12 in the UK. Stuart Kelly's The Book of Lost Books costs 120 pesos (£20), but you can find it online from £8.75.
I've seen photography books here for 900 pesos. Maybe £150 might seem a little steep for one book even in London, but think of the real cost to an Argentine. Can you imagine paying £900 for a book?
This is a country with a rich literary tradition - think of Borges, Sabato, Hernandez - but since the devaluation of the peso in 2002, books have become a luxury item. Personal libraries, much less common now, are seen as a sign of wealth. People buy books they're likely to hold onto for longer. And they don't give them up so easily.
Used bookstores are filled with the literary ghosts of troubled families, libraries sold off by people with no choice. Dusty, monochrome covers hide yellowed pages of political theory, poetry and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Books that have come out within the past few years are rarely seen. New books are guarded in buildings that look like museums, shrink-wrapped in plastic, lurking behind glass. Everything is expensive, delicate, forbidding.
Should people in richer countries feel honour-bound to subsidise books for people in developing countries? No. But next time you gripe about the cost of a book, just think about how long you had to work to pay for it.
