Atlantis Books: Shakespeare & Company’s Mediterranean Cousin
OIA, SANTORINI, GREECE.
Small bookshops have a special place in my heart.
The first time I came to Paris, the famous Shakespeare & Company - a small historic bookstore across the Notre Dame, the place of pilgrimage for writers and bibliophiles - was my number one place to go, above the Eiffel Tower. I loved Shakespeare & Company from Jeremy Mercer’s Time Was Soft Here, a memoir that recounts his sojourn at the infamous bookstore as one of the Tumbleweeds that could reside in the bookstore for free to work on their writing. It speaks of packed books, writers buzzing around the room, and the legendary bookstore proprietor George Whitman.
Though still relatively unknown, I came to the bookstore a few years too late. Shakespeare & Company still holds magic and an incredible selection of books, but it is now flooded with tourists (I myself am one too, and often fall into the trap of distinguishing myself apart from them).
So imagine my joy when I stumbled upon what I call Shakespeare & Company’s Mediterranean Cousin:
Atlantis Books.
Atlantis Books is a ‘humble’ bookshop tucked in a small white building below ground level, easily overlooked when you walk in the stone covered narrow busy streets of Oia, filled with tourists in sun hats and lined with shops selling miniature Santorini’s famous blue domed churches and beaded glass necklaces. Remember to keep left, and find a building with walls painted with shelves of books, and make your way down the staircase with painted blue wooden railings. The bookstore provides much-needed shade from the Santorini sun, and it’s small cave-like interior with white painted walls are covered from floor to ceiling.
The story goes that in 2002, two college guys, Craig Walzer and Oliver Wise, went on a vacation to Santorini and ran out of reading material and there was no good bookstore in sight. after a few glasses of wine, they thought of a crazy idea: why not start one? And the rest is history.
Every time I travel to a new city, I get charmed by the idea of how the day-to-day of locals must be like. Soon, usually towards the end of my stay, I convince myself that I’m going to move to this new small town, pick up a humble job, and stay in a small apartment. Running a small bookstore is my fantasy profession of choice, but I never get around to actually staying for good (for now). These men and perhaps other non-Greeks that work in Atlantis Books have achieved my travel fantasies.
When I came in, the small cashier’s table with a twenty-something looking multilingual man with long blonde waves casually sitting down said hello. His small half-circle table had stacks of beautiful small books. This is a book lover’s equivalent to candy by the cash register in supermarkets.
Books are stacked on tables, perched on small windows, and arranged neatly on the shelves. Despite being much smaller in comparison to Shakespeare & Company, Atlantis Books has an impressive collection of everything from poetry, fiction, memoirs, travel, you name it. Most of the books are in English, but there were Italian, German, French, ones too, or at least those were the ones I spotted. If there was one bookstore that captured all my ever-growing reading list, it’s this place.
Behind me was a display of rare first editions of Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Orwell’s 1984, Woolf’s The Waves (with the jacket designed by her sister, Vanessa), among others. What caught my eye was the one high on the shelf, with the cover colored blue, white, and red. Of course, it’s Sylvia Plath’s Ariel. But with prices that cost at least a third of my entire month’s travel budget, I swallowed and walked away.
After looking up at the ceiling painted with a timeline of the bookstore and names of those who have worked here, I noticed that there were many painted quotes on the walls too. They were quotes from great books in English and Greek and were written above doors, below mirrors, and on any fine real estate of a blank white wall.
Atlantis Books also designs, prints, and stitches editions of their favorite short works that were meant to be for people “who love stories and who are far away from loved ones” who want to send stories home. Paravion Press’ catalogue includes famous works by Emily Dickinson, Anton Chekhov, Walt Whitman, Maxim Gorky, the list goes on. They also make nice prints and my personal favorite: a card with Plato with cucumber slices on his eyes, also fully embracing the Greek chill life.
I wanted to blow my entire trip budget at this bookshop, but I settled for the Roman Philosopher Seneca’s On The Shortness of Life: Life is Long if You Know How to Use It, which was perfect for my state of mind and my next destination: Rome. For just eight Euros, I got myself some helpful life advice and an Atlantis Books stamp on my book to remember this place by.
Atlantis Books
Oia, Santorini
T.K. 84702
Kyklades, Greece
T: +30 22860 72346
W: atlantisbooks.org
E: hello@atlantisbooks.org
How to get there:
Once you're in Oia, walk along the central pathway that cuts through the village. Atlantis Books would be on your left, opposite the old town hall.
Vanity Fair also does a good piece of the bookshop. Read it here.