In the very chic rue Vaneau du 7e arrondissement of Paris, a luminous pharmacy cross brightly illuminates a boutique with a highly sought-after design. This former neighborhood pharmacy has just become a bookstore: the Pharmacy of Souls. In this interior with wooden walls, a young black man is busy, wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a cap over his dreadlocks. Samuel Chaulvet, 27, is the bookseller and only employee of the place. On this winter morning, he settles the last details before the opening, on January 21st. A great admirer of James Baldwin, he contemplates the almost complete work of the African-American writer, which he plans to highlight. “It makes me too proud to run a bookstore that will give it so much space, he explains. Especially in this stuffy neighborhood, where no one is waiting for us. »
“Here is a street of power. I want us to surprise, to shake up the neighborhood right-wingers with left-wing books. » Ramdane Touhami
The Pharmacy of Souls is the new project of Parisian entrepreneur Ramdane Touhami. Boss of the artistic creation agency Art Recherche Industrie, specializing in architecture and photography, but also of the perfumery house Buly 1803, which now belongs to LVMH, this whimsical 48-year-old character wanted to create this bookshop to ” to heal souls with books”. “I wanted to create a nice place and, above all, one that looks like me”, he explains hastily, between two professional phone calls. He then created a place with a strong artistic touch and books with committed ideas, which, according to him, “will jostle” the residents of the neighborhood.
The catalog pays tribute to authors involved in social struggles, whether related to gender, class struggle or race. On the shelves, works by the African-American activist Angela Davis rub shoulders with those of a figure of the Black Panthers, Eldridge Cleaver, from the time when he was not yet allied with the Republican Party. On the French-speaking side, we see the Martinican philosopher Edouard Glissant or the Guadeloupean independence writer Maryse Condé, between the young French authors Diaty Diallo and Fatima Daas. If one can caricature this library by describing it as “decolonial”, Ramdane Touhami replies that “it’s not a woke place, just a cool place”.
Concept store for literature
The entrepreneur is familiar with the 7e district, he has lived there for about ten years. Son of a Moroccan worker, married to the historian of beauty and co-director of the Officine Universelle Buly 1803, Victoire de Taillac, he set up his bookstore a few dozen meters from the Ministry of National Education and the headquarters of the Saint Laurent fashion house. In the neighborhood, the price per square meter is close to 17,000 euros and Eric Zemmour came second in the first round of the 2022 presidential election. With his always familiar language, he launches: “Here is a street of power. I want us to surprise, to shake up the neighborhood right-wingers with left-wing books. » And, if customers wish to buy Eric Zemmour or Michel Houellebecq there, they will be obliged to do so elsewhere.
You have 41.15% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.