Craig Michael Walzer from the USA was visiting the Greek island of Santorini in 2002 with one of his friends called Oliver. When they ran out of books and had nothing to read, they started a joke that they will open a bookshop in Santorini. In 2004, Walzer and Oliver came back to the island and along with Chris, Walzer’s best friend also from the states; Maria from Cyprus, a friend of a friend; Tim, whom Walzer met in Paris; Will, Tim’s cousin; built the place.
Since about ten years ago, Walzer’s friend Jeremy Mecer, wrote a book about bookstores. The Guardian newspaper then asked him to make a list of his ten favorite bookshops. He listed Atlantis Books as number one. The Guardian published this list as Jeremy Mercer’s top 10 bookshops. This is how Atlantis Books became famous in google’s age.
(DNE photo )
Walzer told Daily News Egypt that many English speaking tourists from the British Commonwealth and from North America visit Atlantis Books. Also tourists from France and Italy visit the bookshop. In additions many tourist from East Asia, including Singapore, China and Korea visit the bookshop. He added that a good number of Spanish and Portuguese tourists also visit.
Walzer said that “we try to have something for everybody; unfortunately our Arabic section is still not existing, right now who have some Arabic literature in English”.
Speaking about the Arabic tourists, Walzer commented that in the past few years especially, tourists throughout the Arab countries such as Kuwait, Egypt, Saudi and Lebanon had been coming more and more.
Walzer added that when female tourists from the Arabic Gulf visit the bookshop, they buy many books to read, as they spend most of the time at home.
Speaking specifically about Egyptian tourism there used to be many Egyptians tourists visiting, but last summer they are not as much as before, Walzer concluded.
