Livraria Argumento

Livraria Argumento was founded in São Paulo in 1978 by Dalva Gasparian, who started the bookstore partly because of the difficulty her husband, the businessman and publisher Fernando Gasparian, faced distributing books from the family's own publishing house, Paz e Terra, under Brazil's military dictatorship. The following year, in 1979, she opened a Rio de Janeiro branch, choosing Rua Dias Ferreira in Leblon, near her own home, for a small shop of just over 60 square meters.

During the years of heaviest censorship under the dictatorship (1964-1985), Argumento became known as one of the few bookstores in Rio still carrying titles considered subversive or banned, drawing students, journalists, writers and academics who could find little else, and turning the shop into an informal meeting point for a generation of Brazilian intellectuals.

In 1993 the store expanded into a new space on the same street, adding CDs and DVDs to its stock and opening an attached café, Café Severino, which remains part of the shop today. The bookstore later gained wider national recognition after appearing as a filming location for the telenovela Laços de Família (2000-2001). Dalva Gasparian ran Argumento until her death in 2017, after which her children took over: Marcus in financial management, Eduardo running the café, and Laura handling book acquisitions.