La Două Bufnițe (publishing house).
In December 2016, when we opened La Două Bufnițe (the independent bookshop), we imagined it as a project that would last at least as long as we live.
A place for books, only books, to which we wanted to give the longest possible life by bringing them closer to readers: to discover, get to know, read and reread them. A place with a purpose that was not only commercial but, above all, formative.
A place for dialogue, cultural diversity, freedom of expression and stories, which we made possible thanks to our community of owl-minded readers.
A place that only Timișoara had, because La Două Bufnițe bookshop could exist only in Timișoara.
For more than nine years, we managed to do what Jorge Carrion describes in his book Bookshops: a bookshop can regenerate an area’s social and economic fabric because it represents the present and is an engine of change.
He also wrote that independent bookshops are a city’s treasure: you lose them in a heartbeat, but spend the rest of your life looking for them. So that continuous present turned, and we turned it, into the past in a heartbeat, and we closed our bookshop’s door. And then, perhaps, we began to look for it. We still are.
La Două Bufnițe has not ceased to exist and, yes, it will exist at least as long as we, the Owls, live. Because we are the Owls: à double casquette!
Raluca and Oana — La Două Bufnițe (the bookshop).
Oana and Raluca — La Două Bufnițe (the publishing house).
The story of a publishing house begins with one person trusting another, who, in turn, comes to believe. More precisely, it begins with the meeting of a manuscript and an editor who truly believes in it. And because of that, the editor will care for it, turn it into a book and assume every risk involved in its publication.
Then, with great patience, an editor will always stand behind the published book, without stepping into view, and defend it contre vents et marées.
And, more than anything, will give it the longest possible life, because a book must be passed from one generation to the next.
“It has always been my conviction – and I do not see how anyone could dispute the Tightness of it – that a book must be done according to the writer’s conception of it as nearly as perfectly as possible, and that the publishing problems begin then. – That is, the publisher must not try to get a writer to fit the book to the conditions of the trade, etc. It must be the other way around.” (Max Perkins)
Starting from Max Perkins’s same conviction that a book belongs to its author, La Două Bufnițe Publishing House is a place where creative freedom and freedom of expression meet editorial independence. Above all, it is the only profit we wager on: the sum of encounters between values that will never be for sale or bought.
Such encounters are rare and become stronger over time, but when they happen, we will turn them into a book. This is our only publishing plan: a catalogue built by publishing one book first, followed by another, and another... Book by book.
And finally, after publishing it, we will tell you why we believed in it: so you can discover it, get to know it, read and reread it. Because only together with you, our owl-minded readers, can we pass books from one generation to the next.
La Două Bufnițe Publishing House exists now thanks to our encounter with Dan and Lia Perjovschi, who each trusted us to publish the books accompanying their joint retrospective DRAFT. A Joint Retrospective: two publications about two artistic careers spanning more than 40 years, during which the line between art and life was invisible. The publishing house was born so that we could publish these two incomparable books.
One book at a time! For all time!
As ever yours,
The Owls
