Prestige Bookshop
By Jules
Published On 24/11/2020
It is impossible to talk about bookshops in Kenya and not mention Prestige Bookshop. This is one of the household bookshops in Nairobi. I grew up with my mom buying me a number of books from this bookshop and here I am as an adult, still getting my books here. I favor this bookshop because more often than not, it does stock books by authors that I am interested in which are not readily available in other bookshops. Based on this, you can imagine how easy it was for me to tour this shop. I was joined by Faith (@suckerforcoffe) and Lexa (@lexa_wendy) for this tour and it was a hoot.
One impressive thing about Prestige has to be the diversity they offer in the books stocked. I was able to see a large variety of fiction books including thrillers, drama, romance, fantasy and mystery books. There is also a very healthy stock of Africana, possibly the largest collection of African authored books I have seen in a bookshop so fare. Additionally, there are non-fiction books as well such as memoirs, biographies, inspirational, motivational and religious books. You can also get scholarly books from different areas of expertise well stocked here. In terms of pricing, I would say that some of the books are on the slightly higher side compared to other shops, but not to the bank breaking extremes. At the same time, and a bit surprisingly, they do stock some books that one would expect to be expensive at quite the affordable price. I am specifically referring to their Fantasy books section, it is the cheapest I have seen a number of these books being sold in my bookshop tours so far.
The bookshop manager, Mr Ahmed, is more often than not present in the store. He is one of the most pleasant people you could encounter. For this tour, I had quite the informative discussion with him about books, the Kenyan publishing system among a few other interesting topics that will be in a different post. He is kind and engaging with all his customers, taking time to even recommend books of different genres to buyers. You can also reach out to him for special shipping of specific books that you would want that are not available at the shop. It is such small gestures and attention to detail that gets them loyal customers, I believe.
Based on regular interaction, I believe most of my readers have already visited Prestige bookshop. For those who have not, I would fully recommend that you give this shop a shot. It currently has two branches, one in the CBD in town and the other in Lavington. You can learn more about Prestige from their official website (one of the easiest to navigate) as well as their social media pages. I hope you enjoy your visit!
