NARRA. A story that began with a single question

It all started with a conversation

Nothing about that day suggested a new idea was about to be born.

We were on holiday at a campsite, meeting people and swapping stories. The conversation drifted, almost without our noticing, to personalities, birthdays, horoscopes — to how differently we see ourselves and how others see us.

And suddenly I thought: what if one day someone received, as a gift, a real book written about them?

Not a photo album. Not a list of dates and achievements. A book in which they would recognise their own life — through the memories of the people close to them, stories known since childhood, unexpected details and those small traits of character that make each of us one of a kind.

A book that, once opened, would let them see themselves through the eyes of the people who love them.

Back then it was only a thought that came up mid-conversation. But some thoughts have a remarkable way of staying with us. They return again and again, gather detail, and one day stop being just a dream.

That is what happened with NARRA.

Every life has its own literature

The more I thought about the idea, the clearer it became: our most precious memories are not always tied to big events.

Sometimes it’s a family phrase only your own people understand. A habit everyone teases fondly. A story told at the holiday table for the hundredth time — and still listened to with pleasure.

It’s a person’s character, their contradictions, dreams, small victories. The way they love, make friends, care for others, make mistakes and start again.

Real life is made of details like these.

I wanted to find a special form for them. Not to turn a human life into a dry biography, but to tell it as literature — with atmosphere, vivid images, warmth and attention to every detail.

So that a person wouldn’t just read a few lovely pages about themselves, but would feel how much the people close to them notice, remember and treasure.

I looked for books like this in Moldova, but didn’t find what I had in mind.

So I decided to try to make one myself.

The first book. The first discoveries

The first chance to bring the idea to life was the birthday of my son’s friend.

I began working on the book, gradually shaping its chapters, its voice, its design. I wanted it to be a real edition — not just printed text, but a whole story in which every page carries on from the last.

Quite soon a new question came up.

How do you show the people the book is about?

Photos mattered: they held the familiar faces, places and moments. But pictures from different years, taken in different light and on different cameras, didn’t come together into one artistic whole.

That’s when the idea came to turn photos into watercolour illustrations.

Real memories took on a new form. Familiar faces and cherished moments stayed recognisable, but gained softness, artistic expression and that special atmosphere you find in well-loved illustrated books.

That was when I felt what NARRA should be.

A book where the documentary truth of memories meets the beauty of literary storytelling.

Months of work lay ahead: finding the composition, creating our own visual style, developing the design, the structure and countless details from which the future edition slowly took shape.

But the most unexpected challenge was still to come.

Fifteen refusals and one important “yes”

Once the first layout was ready, all that seemed to remain was the simplest part — printing the book.

I contacted around fifteen printing houses in Chișinău.

I wrote emails, sent messages, made calls, explained my idea.

But almost everywhere I heard the same thing: nobody wanted to start production for a single copy. Some said no straight away; others offered terms that made such a book pointless.

For a printer, it was too small an order.

For me, it was an idea I had already poured so much time, work and hope into.

And yet, among all those refusals, there was one person who agreed to help.

He was the owner of a Chișinău printing house, Print Line.

He didn’t brush off my unusual request. He helped me choose the materials and work through the printing and the making of the cover. Thanks to him, an idea that until then had lived mostly in layouts and imagination began, for the first time, to take physical form.

I still remember that help with deep gratitude.

Sometimes all it takes for someone’s dream to carry on is one person who doesn’t say “impossible”.

Today Print Line is still our printing partner. And behind that professional work there will always be, for me, the story of that very first “yes”.

The book I learned to make with my own hands

Still, printed pages and a finished cover were not yet a book.

There was the binding.

It turned out that making a single copy is no less difficult than printing it. And at some point I realised that if I wanted to see this through, I would have to learn it myself.

Another period of experiments began.

I studied materials, tried different gluing methods, looked for the right construction, redid whatever didn’t work.

Some solutions weren’t sturdy enough. Others didn’t give the neatness I was after.

It took almost a month to find a way to bind the book so that I could pick it up with pleasure and tell myself: “Now it’s right.”

And one day the first finished book lay in front of me.

You could open it, turn the pages, feel the texture of the paper, see the text and illustrations come together into a single story.

What had once been a passing thought on holiday had become a real object.

In that moment NARRA stopped being just an idea for good.

A name that holds a meaning

The name came from the very heart of what I wanted to create.

Latin has the word narrare — “to tell”, “to recount”. From the same root comes the English narrative — a story, an account.

And so the name NARRA was born.

Short, expressive and surprisingly precise.

Because that is exactly what we do — we tell stories.

Only our heroes aren’t invented. They live right beside us. Our mothers and fathers, the people we love, our children, our friends. People whose lives seem ordinary to us only because we’ve known them for years.

But look a little closer — and behind every such life a whole world opens up.

NARRA today

Today NARRA creates personalized books in English, Romanian and Russian.

Each one begins with a person.

With their memories, their character, the people dear to them, the events that left a mark on their life. We gather these stories with care from the words of those close to them, give them literary form and turn photos into watercolour illustrations.

Then comes the time for paper, printing, binding and the details that make a book not just beautiful, but truly personal.

Every copy is made for one particular person. And there is no second one like it.

I like to think NARRA has a special purpose.

We can’t keep every day we’ve lived. We can’t hold back time or bring back all the moments that once seemed ordinary.

But we can gather the most precious of them together. Give them words, images, pages.

And one day hand someone a book in which they find not just the story of their life, but something far more valuable.

Proof that their life matters. That they are loved. That they are remembered.

And that their story deserves to be told.

With warmth,

Ecaterina Smali
Founder of NARRA