bookhaus

Set in the heart of Bristol, this radical bookshop with a strong focus on politics, contemporary fiction and non-fiction, the promotion of independent publishing and a wealth of selling experience offers something for everyone. Read on to find out more about what shop manager Darran’s initial vision was for the shop, how its been realised and what the future holds…

1. We see that bookhaus opened in 2021 and you have managed the shop since then. Tell us what your vision was for the store at the time, has it been realised?

I moved to Bristol from London in 2016. Having worked in the book trade for several years, it struck me that there was a dearth of independent bookshops here. Bristol has a well-earned reputation for being a city in which people are engaged with art and culture, they are passionate about politics and activism, and they like to support local independent businesses. There are also two big universities, and students and graduates make up a large proportion of the population. Bristol was home to a massive environmental movement, it held massive Black Lives Matter protests and thousands of people belonged to organisations like Extinction Rebellion, ACORN, Momemtum and political parties and trade unions. It felt like there was a clear gap in the market for a bookshop that could appeal to this cross section of people. Part of our vision for the shop was to sell lots of books in translation, lots of books from indie presses, lots of black and queer authors and lots of books from a radical perspective. We also wanted to host lots of book launches, debates, poetry readings and literary events, and today we host an average of more than one per week. I would say that my vision is being realised.

2. What is it like running a radical bookshop in Bristol city-centre?

I love it. I worked in the book industry across several roles over the years. I worked on the shop floor at Ottakers and Books Etc, in Borders Head Office in a buying role, as a buyer and account manager for Lasgo Chrysalis, and as the Book and Print Buyer at the Royal Academy of Arts. I left the book industry for a number of years and worked in Craft Beer in pubs and breweries, and then got heavily involved in politics and activism. I feel that this broad and entirely unplanned range of experience has all contributed towards my ability to run bookhaus as I do. I have worked in roles across all sorts of genres of book, I have worked in events, I have experience of running and speaking at political meetings, and I have commercial experience. I only became interested in radical politics after many years of not being interested in politics at all (being far more interested in culture and the arts), which I like to think means that I can easily communicate with and get along with normal people who might not necessarily share my politics. Sometimes it can feel intimidating to walk into a radical bookshop and be unsure if you share their point of view or feel that you are ignorant of the subject matter of the books on display. People have no reason to feel that kind of insecurity here.

3. Tell us more about your different reading groups – how they were set up, how books get chosen for discussion.

I started with a reading group that covered contemporary fiction. Then after running that for a few months, I invited one of our booksellers to take over from me, and I set up a ‘Weird Fiction’ reading group, covering genres like science fiction, horror, fantasy, graphic novels or just odd or unusual books. We then set up a group that reads books on political matters, which then became the Revolutionary Texts reading group. I have read a lot of books on revolutionary history and theory, and I was listening to the Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan, which goes through the history of revolutions in chronological order from the English Revolution through to the Russian Revolution. I thought it would be interesting to have a reading group that covered a key text from each revolution, like Common Sense by Tom Paine for the American, The Social Contract by Rousseau for the French etc… One of our booksellers is familiar with a lot of this revolutionary history and theory so she leads that group. Finally, another of our booksellers said that she would be very keen to run a reading group on feminism so that became our fourth reading group. They alternate between works of fiction and non-fiction. The contemporary fiction reading group changed at the beginning of the year, and now they exclusively read books from independent publishers. This means that people have more of an opportunity to encounter a book that is outside of the mainstream and is perhaps a bit more experimental.

4. What kind of books are your customers currently buying – is there a particular trend?

I’m not sure I would say there is a trend. Outside of our event and reading group books, which are always among our top sellers, we have been selling lots of How to Fall in Love with the Future by Rob Hopkins, Is a River Alive by Robert McFarlane, and a Guide to Wild Swimming Walks near Bristol and Bath, which all related to nature. We have also been selling lots of books like Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, Eurotrash by Christian Kracht, My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante, Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk, which are all translated. We also sell lots of outliers like the Dictionary of Colour Combinations by Wada Sanzō.

5. We see that the current owners are retiring, and you are currently crowdfunding to buy the shop – is there anything you’d like to share with us regarding plans for this in the coming months?

That’s right. The current owners are planning to retire and would like to sell the bookshop to me. I have run it since the beginning, and I would like to maintain the bookshop’s existence and identity as we have built it over the past four years. My vision was to build bookhaus into a bookshop of global significance that will be here for decades to come. I have until the end of August to raise the funds for the takeover.

If anyone would like to learn more about the Crowdfunder you can find it here https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/bookhaus—bristols-radical-home