KHARTOUM, Sudan — On the corner of an old colonial building in downtown Khartoum sits the city’s oldest bookstore, Sudan Bookshop. It was established in 1902, three years after Britain established control over Sudan, and for a long time it was a magnet for the city’s civil servants, politicians and intellectuals.

Today, however, it is a ghost of itself. It is dusty, cold and empty of buyers, and it displays books published mostly in the ’70s and ’80s.

Sudan Bookshop’s manager, El Tayeb Abdel-Rahman, 69, still comes to work every morning at 8:30. Dressed in a chic suit and tie, he awaits customers who rarely come.

“We used to order a shipping container of books every month or two,” he recalled sadly. “But now no one reads anymore.”