Ah, books. They have the ability to transport you to another universe, allowing you to lose yourself in a story. However, this book that has been flying off the shelves of German bookstores are a little different.

Called The Tampon Book, the book opens up to show 15 organic tampons packed neatly in the front, along with 46 pages filled with stories of menstruation. To add to the book's wow factor, the pages are also printed on recycled paper! 

The book was sold out in a day upon its release, and in less than a week after its second print. The best part? It retails at only €3.11 (~RM14.50), whereas 16 organic tampons costs €3.45 (~RM16.20) at a standard German drug store.

Here's the question on everyone's mind though- why the need to do this?

The founders of The Tampon Book actually did this as a protest. In Germany, a tampon is considered a luxury good, and hence is taxed at 19%. However, things that are actually luxury goods like flowers and oil paintings are taxed at only 7% as they are considered necessities!

However, they found a workaround- books are also taxed at 7%. Hence, they put tampons into books so that women wouldn't have to pay extra for something that they need monthly.

In support of lowering the tampon tax, the book's website also leads people to a petition to get rid of the tax as a whole, which has garnered more than 177,000 signatures at publishing.

In Malaysia, we're fortunate that pads and tampons have had zero tax since 2018! Would you buy this book though?

All images sourced from The Tampon Book