Questão 43

Redu, Belgium — Nearly 40 years ago, books saved this village.

    The community was shrinking fast. Farming jobs had disappeared and families were moving away from this pastoral patch of French-speaking Belgium. But $\in$ the mid-1980s, a band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets.

    Now, though, more than half the bookstores have closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others \left when they could no longer make a living. Many who remain are $\in$ their 70s and aren’t sure what’ll happen after they’re gone.

    It’s not just the businesses at risk. It’s Redu’s identity.

Reis Thebault. This village was a book capital. What happens when people stop buying so many books? In: The Washington Post. Internet: www.washingtonpost.com (adapted).

The expression make a living, as used $\in$ the third paragraph, means the same as do for a living.