This village was a book capital. What happens when people stop buying so many books?

Now, though, much than fractional the bookstores person closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others near erstwhile they could nary longer marque a living. Many who stay are successful their 70s and aren’t definite what’ll hap aft they’re gone.

It’s not conscionable the businesses astatine risk. It’s Redu’s identity.

This is simply a spot that celebrates itself arsenic a village du livre, a “book town.” Its nationalist lampposts and trash cans are adorned with bibliophilic hieroglyphs.

But what happens erstwhile the main attractions go little attractive? This is the situation the colony du livre indispensable present confront.

“Life is changing, but thing is dying,” said Anne Laffut, the politician of Libin, the municipality wherever Redu sits. “Everything is evolving.”

Redu holds a vaunted spot successful the past of publication towns, an honorific that originated with an eccentric Brit who brought hundreds of thousands of books to the Welsh marketplace municipality Hay-on-Wye successful the 1960s.

Richard Booth, who died successful 2019, transformed Hay into a planetary superior of utilized books, attracting galore booksellers and opening a half-dozen shops of his own.

Booth’s occurrence inspired struggling agrarian communities astir the satellite to remake themselves arsenic publication towns, hoping to pull tourists and jump-start their economies. Redu was the archetypal copycat.

Spurred by a sojourn to Hay successful the precocious 1970s, part-time Redu nonmigratory Noel Anselot hatched a akin strategy for his play home, according to a little past of the spot by Miep van Duin, who astatine 76 is 1 of the village’s longest tenured booksellers.

On Easter play successful 1984, astir 15,000 radical descended connected Redu, perusing the utilized and antiquarian volumes vendors sold retired of abandoned stables and sidewalk stalls. The booksellers decided to stay. Others soon followed, on with an illustrator, a bookbinder and a insubstantial maker. It was an eclectic, countercultural crowd. Young families arrived, too, and caller students trickled into the faded schoolhouse.

The pièce de résistance: For the archetypal clip successful years, Redu had its ain bakery.

The village, van Duin concluded, had been reborn.

“It was overmuch much lively past than it is now,” she said.

Now determination are 12 oregon less bookshops, depending connected however 1 counts — and, perhaps, who is doing the counting. Those who are much optimistic astir the aboriginal of the bookstores thin to mention a higher number.

Those who are little hopeful accidental their commercialized has fallen retired of fashion, and that people, particularly young people, are speechmaking less books.

“The clientele is aging and is adjacent disappearing,” said Paul Brandeleer, proprietor of La Librairie Ardennaise.

Brandeleer was among the pioneers of Easter ’84. His inventory includes tomes that are hundreds of years old.

Now, astatine 73, he’s surviving disconnected his status pension. A motion successful beforehand of his store utilized to advertise his services arsenic achat — vente, buying and selling, but the erstwhile has been crossed out. He doesn’t privation immoderate much books.

“I person 30,000 books, but erstwhile we disappear, they volition spell to the trash,” Brandeleer said. “We person nary kids to instrumentality over, they are not interested.”

Surveying his shop’s rows of books, its debased ceiling and ceramic walls, helium offered a metaphor pulled from the stacks: “I deliberation we are the past of the Mohicans.”

Down the road, the proprietor of Bouquinerie Générale — a store that specializes successful bandes dessinées, French-language comics besides known arsenic BDs — had his ain genre-appropriate comparison.

“We are similar Asterix: The past colony warring everyone,” said Bob Gossens, invoking the French comic publication bid astir a tiny Gallic colony that resists the Roman Empire.

In his telling, the Romans mightiness beryllium planetary tech companies oregon Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, pulling his clientele distant 1 app astatine a time.

“The Internet is breaking everything,” the 73-year-old said.

Nowadays, Gossens gets fewer customers speech from a halfway radical of regulars who travel for his uncommon editions. Those who bash halt in, helium has noticed, thin to dainty the spot similar an grounds of artifacts from different age, alternatively than a still-functioning store.

“They travel present similar they spell to the museum,” helium said.

Gossens does not foretell a storybook ending for the shops successful his village: “We volition dice a earthy death,” helium said.

“When you spell to a publication municipality successful the U.K. successful November, sometimes you person to hold earlier you tin pay,” van Duin said. “And here, erstwhile idiosyncratic comes successful in November and buys a book, I could buss him.”

While a instrumentality to the glory days is astir apt retired of reach, van Duin is hopeful that Redu volition clasp its creator vibe, adjacent if the bookstores proceed to go little plentiful.

“It volition enactment a peculiar village, due to the fact that that’s the estimation and that doesn’t dice precise quick,” she said.

This is simply a earthy process successful a colony beingness cycle, said Maarten Loopmans, a geography prof astatine Belgium’s K.U. Leuven. If a assemblage similar Redu is to survive, yet a caller procreation indispensable instrumentality implicit and onslaught a equilibrium betwixt “livability for themselves and, astatine the aforesaid time, an plus to merchantability to the outer world,” helium said.

“I’m beauteous definite it volition inactive beryllium charismatic to tourists,” Loopmans added. “But it volition request to reinvent itself with a caller communicative that is much charismatic these days.”

When Johan Deflander and Anthe Vrijlandt moved to Redu astir six years ago, the couple’s friends warned them they were making a mistake.

“Everyone said, ‘Oh you’re going to bargain a location successful Redu? Isn’t that the colony that’s going to die? Where they utilized to person bookshops?’ ” Deflander said.

The couple, who are successful their aboriginal 50s and unrecorded portion of the twelvemonth successful Kenya, wanted to unfastened a caller benignant of establishment, 1 that moves beyond the “stuffy, old, bankrupt secondhand bookshop idea,” Vrijlandt said.

“It’s each successful the narrative, you know?” Deflander said. “Some of the radical who person been present for a longer term, they person difficulties changing the narrative. While we — ”

“While we person the luxury of not being stuck successful the past,” Vrijlandt finished.

Their shop, La Reduiste, hosts jazz nights and movie screenings, successful summation to selling books successful aggregate languages and serving espresso and Belgian beer. Books — or, possibly conscionable arsenic important, the idea of books arsenic symbols of comfortableness oregon quaint sophistication — stay astatine the halfway of the business, which is simply a exemplary the 2 accidental could beryllium replicated villagewide. La Reduiste, they said, is profitable.

“The aboriginal is looking successful the linkages betwixt books and creation successful general,” Deflander said, arsenic helium and Vrijlandt took turns moving the barroom and greeting customers. “You tin bash a batch of absorbing taste activities if you unfastened it up from conscionable selling books.”

One of Redu’s astir contiguous concerns revolves astir the schoolhouse, a stately but abandoned chromatic gathering astatine the halfway of town. Laffut, the mayor, called a gathering to sermon imaginable aboriginal uses of the gathering and immoderate 70 radical showed up — astir a 4th of the village’s population. The enthusiasm was uplifting, she said.

“There is simply a alteration of mentalities,” Laffut said. “The elders deliberation the colony is changing due to the fact that determination are less bookstores and it is simply a disappointment. But determination is simply a caller generation, which is precise progressive successful Redu. Many volunteers are teaming up with the aforesaid tendency for the colony to proceed to endure.”

Laffut, who has been the municipality’s politician for 15 years, said she is nary longer disquieted astir Redu’s future. The village’s determination successful the Belgian Ardennes, a immense portion of forests and rolling hills, means it should proceed to bring successful quality lovers, she said, and its fistful of restaurants and proximity to the Euro Space Center besides help.

But possibly the astir important caller improvement was the accomplishment of Mudia, an interactive creation depository that opened successful 2018 successful a erstwhile vicar’s house, which displays works by Picasso, Rodin and Magritte. The depository has bolstered Redu’s estimation arsenic a viable destination for sculptors and painters, and it is the astir salient illustration of the publication town’s modulation to an arts town.

Roland Vanderheyden has a ft successful some Redu’s past and future. He worked afloat clip arsenic a bookbinder for six decades until cutting backmost successful caller years to go a painter. Now, successful the 4 rooms wherever his store utilized to be, helium operates a assemblage with his wife, Annie Kwasny. They’re some 75 and convinced this is Redu’s way forward.

“We created this assemblage to determination the colony toward the arts,” Kwasny said. “We are successful the mediate of a transition, really.”

Some, similar van Duin, are contented watching specified changes unfold. Her shop, De Eglantier and Crazy Castle, is connected to her home, and she plans to tally it until she’s nary longer able.

Her bookstore — a renovated and well-appointed barn with an English-language conception successful the erstwhile hayloft — exemplifies Redu’s past large evolution, from a farming assemblage successful diminution to a locus of letters.

“There’s a earthy process of change,” she said. “It’s inevitable, I think.”

After a caller interview, van Duin flipped the motion connected her shop’s beforehand doorway backmost to unfastened and took her spot down the till, awaiting the village’s adjacent chapter.