Walking with a wooden cane, the middle-aged man accosted me. "You from Indonesia, that old colony of the Netherlands?" he asked with a laugh as he shuf-fled down the stairs of the Richard Booth Bookshop, the biggest bookstore in Hay-on-Wye. A three-floor building, it's a storehouse of more than 500,000 old books. A small room in the rear part of the building serves as an office for Booth the owner of the bookshop.

"Come on, let's get inside," Boo