Nick Cave fans swarm charity bookshop in UK after musician donates thousands of books

Nick Cave fans have descended on a charity bookshop in Hove, in southern England, after the musician donated 2,000 books from his personal collection.

The Australian singer made the donation to Hove’s Oxfam Bookshop on Blatchington Road. The books were once part of his personal library, which was recreated for an art installation that went to Denmark and Canada.

A bookshop worker named only as Richard told 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.”

Books from Cave’s collection on sale included books by Salman Rushdie, Christopher Hitchens and Ian McEwan, a first edition of Johnny Cash’s novel Man In White, and “a recipe book about aphrodisiacs”, the Times reported.

The Times reported that “a crowd of people” were going through Cave’s books in the shop by Friday, with treasures including Cave’s boarding pass for a flight to Amsterdam, a map of the US, an empty packet of cigarettes and an “old envelope with the words ‘Lukes tooth’ written in Cave’s distinctive handwriting.” His son Luke is 34 years old.

On Saturday, a queue formed at the shop as word spread.

Cave and his family moved to Brighton in the 2000s. One of his sons, Arthur, died in 2015 after falling from a cliff in Ovingdean Gap in Brighton. The family left for Los Angeles, then London; in 2023, they sold the Brighton home for £2.9m. Cave wrote: “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.”

Richard told the Argus that many of Cave’s books will just look like regular books on the shelves, unless fans go searching: “A couple have plane tickets used as bookmarks but apart from that. It’s not like he was one of these people who had a book plate or wrote his name in.”

However, some customers reported finding books with sentences underlined or passages noted in Cave’s handwriting. Some were also once gifts, including a copy of The Lieutenant of Inishmore inscribed by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh.

A spokesperson for Cave said he wouldn’t comment on the donation, saying: “He thinks the discoveries will remain intriguing mysteries for those who find them.”