The Portuguese bookstore competes with the Australian Avid Reader and the Romanian Cărturești. The award is the result of a joint initiative by the London Book Fair and the Publishers Association. The winner will be known this month
Considered by many to be “the most beautiful in the world”, Livraria Lello, one of the greatest ex-libris of the city of Porto, is among the three international finalists applying for the Bookstore of the Year 2020 award, awarded in a joint initiative of the Book Fair London and the Publishers Association.
The emblematic space of Invicta, founded in 1906 and with 115 years of history, has the competition of the Australian Avid Reader and the Romanian Cărturești in the list of the three most creative and innovative bookstores in the world.
Among the candidates from 15 countries competing in the different categories, Lello is the only Portuguese representative. The winners will be chosen by a committee of experts and will be announced during this month.
“It is especially gratifying to receive this nomination in a year as particular as 2020. It is an honor to be able, through our example, to inspire other bookstores around the world to reinvent themselves and react with creativity and resilience to the difficulties that the book sector is going through ”, Stresses Aurora Pedro Pinto, president of the Board of Directors of Livraria Lello, Aurora Pedro Pinto.
“In view of all the difficulties caused by the covid-19 pandemic, we assumed the mission of getting the whole world to read as even more fundamental and, thinking of readers and authors, we made the challenges inspiring, creating initiatives that will be forever marked in our history ”, explains the leader of Livraria Lello.
Forced to close its doors for about two and a half months, last year, Lello adopted a set of initiatives to maintain proximity with readers in a period marked by distance.
An example of this was the offer of more than 10,000 books of some of the greatest classics in literature, through a pioneer drive-thru system in the world book sector, over the course of a month.
@ Expresso