Culture

Paris Mayor urges citizens not to buy books on Amazon

03 Nov, 2020

Anne Hidalgo called for support for the city's closed bookshops.

Anne Hidalgo, the Mayor of Paris, made a call to citizens not to buy books on Amazon in order to support local Parisian bookshops, which have been put to the test by the new lockdown launched to counter the contagion of the second wave of covid-19.

"I say this to all Parisians: do not buy on Amazon. Amazon means the death of our bookshops and our neighbourhood life," said the Mayor of Paris with Spanish origins, which today, together with the writer Sylvain Tesson, has supported an initiative to ask to reopen the bookshops that in this period of confinement must remain closed as they are considered a "non-essential" service.

"Paris," stresses Hidalgo, "is a city where books must have their place as an essential good. Buy from your local bookseller; you can order your title and then collect your book".

At the same time Sylvain Tesson made his appeal directly to President Emmanuel Macron: "I don't want to believe that a man who was a pupil of Paul Ricoeur could let such a situation continue". A direct reference to the academic history of the current French president who, among other things, was assistant to the famous philosopher.