PHILIP ROTH
CMYK were very sad to hear about the passing of Philip Roth – one of our greatest authors. Provocative, insightful and blessed with a devilish wit, Roth scandalised middle America with his intelligent and often sexually explicit novels which blurred the lines between reality and fiction.
Along with his alter-ego characters Nathan Zuckerman and David Kepesh we celebrate his more ribald inventions Alexander Portnoy and most notoriously Mickey Sabbath.
In memory of the great man and his work we have revised this short video.
As he once said – ‘Literature isn’t a moral beauty contest. It’s power rises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.
ISLAND - Aldous Huxley
After the sucess of our Brave New World 3D edition we have commisioned La Boca to carry on the series style for our latest Huxley publication, Island, in 3D.
Island is published tomorrow by Vintage Classics
THE MEANING OF CRICKET – Jon Hotten
I love cricket. A couple of my friends do. The rest of the them don’t understand it. In fact, 90% of the people I know don’t care about it, either groan, or roll their eyes at the mere mention of it. Naturally, when given the task of designing this cover, I chose to commission a Brazilian illustrator who lives in France and had no knowledge of the game.
And what a result! Laurindo Feliciano’s brilliantly surreal work seemed perfect for capturing the oddities of this seemingly complex game – at once anachronistic, playful and bemusing… The author described it as ‘being like a classic prog album cover – superb!‘
And the best thing, is that I think I’ve converted Laurindo… we’ll be discussing the finer points of the ‘lbw rule’ in no time…
Maybe this lovely book will convert you too.
It’s published this month by Yellow Jersey Press.
FAIRE LE MUR - Wallpaper Exhibition
The design team recently visited Paris and attended the
“Faire le mur,” exhibition at the Louvre. The title refers to
the different uses wallpaper has in the construction and decoration of a wall
surface.
Spanning several rooms, the show contrasted wallpapers from different periods, conveying the wide range of styles used in the 18th Century to the present day. The show also featured over 200 pieces from the French interior designer Pierre Frey.
With its vivid colours and highly tactile prints, Faire le mur truly showed that wallpaper can be considered a work of art in its own right.
CLAUDIO MAGRIS
Three different takes on Europe – a mixture of travelogue, history, and in the case of ‘A Different Sea’, fiction. The designs are inspired by the colours of Istrian coastlines, rivers and buildings - fragmented, yet structured and teeming with life.
Published by Vintage Classics in November.
CITY ON FIRE - Garth Risk Hallberg
City on Fire is an epic novel of 1970’s New York which received rave reviews in hardback.
We decided to take a photographic approach for the paperback cover of City on Fire, and have reproduced an image by Swiss photographer René Burri (1933 – 2014). Burri was part of the prestigious Magnum Photos cooperative. He is well-known for his black and white photographic portraits of Che Guevara and Picasso, but his use of colour was exceptional too and can be seen in this wonderful photograph of New York in the snow with the bright yellow taxi. More of his work can be seen here
The paperback edition of City on Fire is published today by Vintage Books.
AGAINST ELECTIONS - David Van Reybrouck
Fear-mongering populists, distrust in the establishment, personality contests instead of reasoned debate: these are the results of the latest elections.
This brilliant book argues for the need to return to a form of democracy that does not involve elections at all: historically members of the public were appointed to positions in government through a combination of volunteering and lottery called sortitive democracy.
This hugely influential manifesto presents the practical case for sortition – a true democracy that actually works.
What are we waiting for?
VINEGAR GIRL - Anne Tyler
When designing the jacket for Vinegar Girl, Anne Tyler’s retelling of The Taming of the Shrew, we decided to focus on the springtime setting of Baltimore, famous for its blossom. Flowers, gardens and gardening are very important to Kate and we tried various images of blossom to begin with, all of which we concluded were too soft for the humour of the story. Finally we decided upon a bold botanical drawing of a peony from the John Reeves Collection, courtesy of the Natural History Museum, London giving it a contemporary twist by changing the white background for a striking blue. This works not only aesthetically but also because a peony is given as a gift in the book.
The endpapers are illustrated by Clare Curtis.
Vinegar Girl is published today by Hogarth Shakespeare.
THE GIRLS - Emma Cline
Having read Emma Cline’s manuscript, Neil Krug’s work immediately suggested itself as a perfect fit for the jacket. Neil’s photographs have a real 60/70′s vibe achieved by his techinque and the use of old film, years past its sell-by date - this was all just right for the feel we wanted for our jacket.
Neil is based in California which was the perfect location for an in situ shoot. Unfortunatley we were not able to join him! But we were lucky enough to meet him and discuss the brief directly and at length when he was in London photographing various bands.
Neil also photographed Emma for the author photograph on the jacket.
The Girls is published by Chatto & Windus on Thursday 16th June
FEN - Daisy Johnson
The Brush strokes for the cover and the background in the images above were produced in house.
Read the extract ‘how to lose it’ here, which is one of the stories from Daisy Johnsons debut novel Fen.
REUNION - Fred Uhlman
‘He came into my life in February 1932 and never left it again.’
The first line of this delicate and powerful short novel is an enticing opener.
Reunion is a story of the fragility, and strength, of the bonds between friends.
At school, middle-class Hans is intrigued by the
aristocratic new boy, Konradin, and before long they become best
friends. It’s a friendship of the greatest kind, of shared interests and
long conversations, of hikes in the German hills and growing up
together. But change is coming for Germany - change that will affect the boys for for the rest of their lives.
The cover illustration alludes to the fracturing of the boys’ relationship and the power of the written word. It is a book that deserves your attention.
Reunion is published by Vintage Classics in September.
THE LOW VOICES - Manuel Rivas
The Low Voices is a brilliant coming-of-age novel from one of Spain’s greatest storytellers. It draws on a patchwork of
memories from Rivas’s early life in rural Galicia, and celebrates those individuals we all encounter in life but whose memory is drowned out by the ‘loud voices’ of history.
Full of wonderful personal stories and set
against a background of the ravages of the Spanish Civil War and its
aftermath, The Low Voices is a humorous and philosophical take on memory, belonging, and the nature of storytelling itself.
The cover incorporates snippets of the author’s own family photographs, and aims to capture something of the feeling of ‘morrinha’; a Galician word meaning a very particular kind of melancholy and longing for homeland.
NUTSHELL - Ian McEwan
Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers. The witness to this tale is the inquisitive, nine-month-old baby still in the womb.
The idea for this cover came while reading the manuscript. It was fortunate that the title Nutshell had a ‘u’ with which to create the pregnant belly. The curve of the ‘u’ had to be distorted sufficiently to give a full term pregnancy shape whilst retaining the look of the typeface. The ‘u’ also had to be big enough on the cover to hold the foetus. The study of the foetus in the womb is from a facsimile of a drawing by Leonardo da Vinci.
Nutshell will be published by Jonathan Cape in September
RICHARD FLANAGAN - New Series Look (with before and after photos)
Vintage Books relaunch the Richard Flanagan backlist with a new series look. Here are the before and after photos.
The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Hardback) and Gould’s Book of Fish in the backlist already had iconic covers, so it seemed natural to use their imagery again. This affected the commissioning of the other covers in the series as they were both already illustrated. each book features a distinct colour which straight away helped to establish a different mood for each novel.
William Bragg was commissioned to illustrate the other covers in the series. Here are a few words from Bill about working on the series:
‘In general the illustrations called for a much less narrative approach than I’m used to, so rather than create specific scenes suggested by the novels with a character at the centre, a shift of emphasis was required so that the focus became more about the environment and capturing a specific atmosphere through the depiction of landscape, weather, light, colour and form.’
