As news of its uncertain future spreads, readers are flocking to the city’s oldest bookshop – but can it survive changing tastes and technology?

Despite the pandemic, shoppers crowd the small bookshop at 18 Rue d’Angleterre. Many are here for the first time, squeezing their way between the stacks of books piled high along the walls of the bookshop said to be the oldest in Tunis.

Sunk within an obscure street near the city’s medina, there is little to distinguish number 18 from its rival further down the street, or the small haphazard book stands that shelter in the square opposite from a rain that never quite comes. All nestle amid the bleached awnings of the French ville nouvelle, itself marking the transition from the storied Arab architecture of the medina to the grand colonial designs of Tunis’ city centre.