A reward of 100 million lire (pound;35,000) has been offered by Loescher, the Turin publisher, for information leading to the recovery of 100,000 textbooks stolen from its warehouse last month, writes David Newbold.
Ten armed robbers claiming to be the “Robin Hoods of culture” made a dawn raid, homing in on Latin dictionaries at pound;45 a copy, the flagship of Loescher production. “We’re taking these to give to the poor,” one said.
The price of textbooks in Italy is painful: 11-year-olds need books costing pound;200 for the scuola media, and twice as much for the scuola superiore, at 14. So far there have been no takers for the reward.
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