The town and castle of Chinon, on the banks of the Vienne, housed, in the first quarter of the fifteenth century, the shadow of a royal court. Officers of state in threadbare garments kept up what dignity they could in decrepit dwellings, most of the furniture of which had been pawned by a queen in a faded, shabby dress, desperately trying to keep the wolf, in the shape of a host of creditors,from the door.

Events like these might seem out of place in such a rural community, but Hay is no ordinary town. It is the home of the largest secondhand bookstore in the world. Every available building is full of books, and every year this flourishing enterprise attracts visitors from all corners of the globe.

Only a handful of mourners attended the funeral at St. Marx churchyard outside Vienna on December 7, 1791. Sewn into a plain shroud that was coated with quicklime, the deceased was placed in a communal pauper’s grave. No grave marker of any kind graced the final resting place of one of the world’s greatest musicians, dead two months before his 36th birthday: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.