"Good evening, I would like to buy all the books on display." A "loot" of ten thousand euros for a mysterious buyer who a few days ago entered the historic Hoepli bookstore in Milan, purchasing 200 volumes dedicated mainly to art, history, philosophy and politics .

An episode so incredible that the booksellers decided to leave the window dismantled for a few days with a message: "Sorry, we've sold everything." There is no clear common thread for the titles purchased, neither as authors nor as subjects. So a truly unusual purchase, for an expense of around ten thousand euros, which makes one think more of the urgent need to fill empty shelves than of a bibliomaniac in withdrawal. Last Thursday, Hoepli reports, "the customer approached the cashier and made the explicit request to buy all the books in the window. At that point, a group of booksellers got to work taking the volumes and passing them through the cashier, to then put them in the bookshop's canvas bags, the ones with the famous phrase "I read books!". The stranger paid by credit card without asking for an invoice and left in a taxi."

"An exceptional sale. I was amazed and found it brilliant the idea that someone could consider a shop window so beautiful that they wanted to buy it in its entirety. We are talking about a space that is 5 meters long and 3 meters high," Matteo Hoepli, the last descendant of Ulrico Hoepli , a Swiss naturalized Italian who at the end of the 19th century opened the bookshop - and the publishing house - in the center of Milan and which is now located in the via Hoepli dedicated to him, told Corriere della Sera.

"We know nothing about the identity of the customer, nor about the use he will make of the books," the publishing house explained today, specifying that the purchased display case "is just one of the many display cases in the bookshop. This one contained mostly books on history, politics, art, fashion and design, some of which were in English. The other display cases instead displayed titles of fiction, books for children, science and sports volumes."

"This episode — concludes Matteo Hoepli — taught us that you never know what can happen. I represent the fifth generation of a family business and I don't remember such an exceptional episode in the stories of my grandparents or great-grandparents. Now I will tell it to my children and grandchildren."

(Unioneonline/D)

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