Behind beloved books

Mervyn Sloman reflects on The Book Lounge thriving in the digital age and building reading communities through Open Book Festival

- Rolland Simpi Motaung

n-between Cape Town central midday bustle I tighten my shoelaces, check the street names on my phone, and set off. My destination is Roeland Street — and with a name that sounds a bit like my own, perhaps it’s the street and not the bookstore calling me.

As I enter and walk around the bookstore, I imagine all the hard work it took to transform an old empty office space into a thriving independent bookstore. With a lease starting on the 1st of October, Mervyn Sloman, owner and founder of The Book Lounge, had only two months to set up shop before the grand opening on the first of December 2007.

“There was a big hole in the floor and you could poke your head down and see that there was something downstairs,” Sloman says during our interview.

“The world was about to hit a massive financial crisis. So, the timing wasn’t great on that level. We had a mad rush. We had a hell of a lot of work to do. It was an absolutely crazy time because I wanted to open at the beginning of December.”

Seventeen years later, The Book Lounge remains entrenched as one of Cape Town’s cultural hubs for authors and book lovers from different backgrounds including tourists. The relaxed and easily accessible independent bookshop offers a wide variety of books in different genres such as fiction, nonfiction, poetry, cooking and children’s literature.

After settling on Prentis Hemphill’s What It Takes to Heal and David Bristow’s Loony Birds, Lion Men and the Snake that was a Gerbil, affixed with the white bookmark and all, I head downstairs to see the big boss to confirm our virtual interview for the following week.

Sloman’s love for reading began in primary school due to access to a well-stocked library.