India, April 14 -- Prince Book Stall, Raja Book Stall, Vijay Kumar's pavement stall-Delhi's backpacker hub of Paharganj brimmed with establishments selling used paperbacks. The title pages of many of these books bore stamps from bookstores in distant countries, left behind by foreign travellers en route to Parvati Valley, Pushkar, or Goa. Most of those shops have shut forever. Except for one.

Jacksons Books turns 30 this month.

In a city where secondhand bookstores (and even first-hand ones) rarely last, Jacksons has endured. It also holds the capital's richest collection of used books-in English and Hindi, as well as French, German, Japanese, Hebrew, Italian, and Spanish.

Founded in April 1996 on Paharganj's Main Bazar, the shop sits ...