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Article snippet: CARACAS, Venezuela — Of all the compromises he has had to make during Venezuela’s economic crisis, none may be as great for Carlos Sandoval as the books. A self-described bibliophile — “my life is literature,” he said — Mr. Sandoval is one of Venezuela’s foremost literary critics and a professor at two of the country’s finest universities. Yet, Mr. Sandoval can no longer afford to buy books. “It’s the worst sacrifice,” he lamented. Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis has spared few across the population of more than 30 million. The nation is on the verge of, and by some measures already in, an extraordinary period of hyperinflation, with the inflation rate above 800 percent through October. Next year, consumer prices are forecast by the International Monetary Fund to soar more than 2,300 percent. This is an economy in which even the hourly rate in a parking lot recently ticked upward in the two hours it took a shopper to run some errands. Venezuelans of all socio-economic classes have been buffeted by sharply rising costs amid desperate scarcities of food and medicine, the collapse of public services and the medical system, and rampant crime. Their purchasing power has plummeted as wage increases have lagged far behind prices. But affording purchases is only one major challenge. Another is figuring out how to actually pay for them. The Venezuelan currency, the bolívar, is in short supply, and finding a fistful of them has become one of the nightmares of daily l... Link to the full article to read more