Nick Cave donates thousands of books to charity shop in Hove
Nick Cave has donated over 2,000 books from his personal collection to a charity bookshop in Hove, honouring the time he previously spent living in the Brighton area.
Fans of the Australian singer flocked to the Oxfam Bookshop on Hove’s Blatchington Road in an attempt to score an item from his personal collection, which previously formed part of an art installation that toured Denmark and Canada.
A worker in the bookshop told local publication The Argus: “It’s a very interesting donation. The types of books are very wide ranging – there’s philosophy, art, religion, even old fiction paperbacks. It’s an incredibly varied donation. He clearly held on to his books, some of them are quite old.”
According to The Times, the collection of books included titles by Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and a first edition copy of the novel Man in White by Johnny Cash.
Other treasures reportedly found within the books included a boarding pass for a flight to Amsterdam, an empty packet of cigarettes, and an envelope with the words ‘Luke’s tooth’ written in Cave’s handwriting, relating to his son Luke.
Cave and his family had moved to the Brighton area in the 2000s, but following the tragic death of his son Arthur in 2015, who fell from a cliff at Ovingdean Gap, Cave sold his home there for £2.9 million. He later said: “Brighton had just become too sad … we did, however, return once we realised that, regardless of where we lived, we just took our sadness with us.”
The singer recently marked the tenth anniversary of his son’s passing in his newsletter The Red Right Hand Files, where he wrote: “The pain remains, but I have found that it evolves over time. Grief blossoms with age, becoming less a personal affront, less a cosmic betrayal, and more a poetic quality of being as we learn to surrender to it.”
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Music Newsletter
All the latest music news from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.