Italy has become the unexpected setting for a cultural war without bullets: a revolution of bibliophiles who, instead of burning books as in the past, prefer to turn bookstores into their own economic machine guns. Under the slogan Svuota la vetrina (Empty the shelves), a handful of idealists are literally buying everything on bookstore shelves and then distributing the volumes among the populace. They want to show that reading matters, or at least that being surrounded by books qualifies as cultural posturing.
The first spark of this unusual revolt came in August 2024, when a couple, allegedly consisting of a foreign man and a local woman, spent $10,000 in a single window of the legendary Hoepli bookstore in Milan. In 40 minutes, they emptied the new releases shelf, like a civilized looting. Francesca Mancini, a stunned shop assistant, described the episode as “surreal,” as if she had witnessed a black market for rare encyclopedias.
Inspired by this cinematic act, Milanese publisher Daniela Nicoló decided to replicate it in a less opulent but more viral way. She bought the entire window display of I Baffi, a modest bookshop, took a selfie next to it, and set up the Instagram account #Svuotalavetrina. Since then, with the excitement of someone who has discovered that humans can still act without Netflix, 28 Italian bookshops have been “affected,” ranging from Milan to Bari, Naples, Genoa, Bologna, and other charming provincial corners.
The movement presents itself as a noble act: “reclaiming the power of reading” and “supporting booksellers financially,” say the protagonists. It all sounds very lofty, as if they were mounting a cultural civil resistance in the midst of the TikTok era.
Of course, while they celebrate their “militancy,” 60% of Italian bookstores—some 3,706 in total—continue to hang the sign “Closed” due to lack of sales or the crisis in the sector. Examples have emerged that seem straight out of a Paolo Sorrentino film:
teachers investing their own money, an anonymous reader buying 155 children’s books to donate to libraries, a couple emptying the window display of an LGBTIQ+ bookshop “out of militancy”… They have even repeated the action in the same window on different days (“I’m buying everything again!”), as if they were collecting empty bookshelves.
Of course, the criticism has already arrived: is this culture or is it just showing off that you have enough money to spend without thinking? Some have accused Nicoló of snobbery: “Who buys books without knowing the titles or authors?” they ask. To which she responds with dignity: “I don’t care about the online controversy: buying books is an adventure, and if you’re not interested in one, you give it away.” Solidarity, then, with booksellers, coupled with a little benevolent posturing.
The initiative has achieved great media visibility, but there is no guarantee that it will change the alarming figures: in 2023, only 40% of Italians read at least one book, according to official data. Giorgia Meloni’s government has no intention of rescuing bookshops, and neither do the local authorities, it seems, so it will be up to those “readers” who find lessons in democracy in cardboard boxes with other people’s covers to bring about the revolution.
Is this an act of literary rebellion? Cynicism wrapped in a literary red carpet? Whatever it is, Svuota la vetrina has achieved something unthinkable: it has taken books out of their display cases and put them into the hands of ordinary people. So, as they empty the shelves, perhaps they are also emptying their prejudices: maybe being a reader is not about accumulating culture, but sharing it? And if that’s ideology, here’s your civilized revolution, smelling of ink and feigned altruism.
