Nick Cave fans have swarmed a charity bookshop in Hove after the singer donated 2,000 books from his own personal collection.
The donation was made to the Oxfam store on Blatchington Road and included a wide range of titles. Some were first editions, others were paperback novels with worn covers and handwritten notes. Staff described the selection as everything from religion and philosophy to fiction and art.
Within hours of the news breaking, fans began showing up in droves. By the next morning, queues had formed outside the store. Many were not just looking for rare titles but hoping to find signs of Cave’s past inside the pages.
Some books contained underlined passages and annotations in what appears to be Cave’s handwriting. Others held forgotten items like a plane ticket to Amsterdam, an empty cigarette packet, a map of the United States and an envelope marked “Luke’s tooth”.
An Oxfam staff member named Richard told local press that the donation stood out for how varied and personal it felt. “He clearly held on to his books,” he said. “Some of them are quite old.”
Among the most talked-about items was a first edition of Johnny Cash’s novel Man in White. Other titles came from authors including Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan and Christopher Hitchens. One visitor walked away with a cookbook focused entirely on aphrodisiacs.
Cave has spoken publicly about his deep connection to reading. In 2020 he shared a list of his favourite books on his Red Hand Files site. That list included works by Sylvia Plath, Adam Hochschild and Jerome Rothenberg.
A spokesperson for Cave confirmed the donation and said only that “the discoveries will remain intriguing mysteries for those who find them”.
By the end of the weekend, most of the books were gone. What remains is a strange kind of literary trail. If fans came looking for meaning, I think they might have found it.
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