ALL THAT MAN IS - David Szalay
David Szalay’s All That Man Is brings together nine men from different parts of Europe, each at a different stage of their life, all striving for an understanding of what it means to be alive, here and now.
We commissioned Nick White to create a collage for the jacket. Both the front and back cover is divided into nine segments from different maps.
VINTAGE FUTURES
Nine dystopian classics utilising a unique graphic approach - check out below for the science behind the series…
VINTAGE FUTURES
Fast forward to the future with this new Vintage Classics set, out on the 7th April.
The front covers work to a grid. The images within the grid all animate when you pass a lined acetate sheet across them. The design is based on the principle of a frame animation with the gap between each bar being an equal division of a single black bar. As the acetate is moved across the book cover, the next frame of the sequence in revealed creating the effect of a moving image. This piece of acetate is found lightly attached to the inside cover.
When the books are turned over and aligned correctly they reveal Centrifugal and Centripetal Structuring (1965) an artwork by Franco Grignani, one of the major designers of the Twentieth Century. The black and white lines complement the lenticular theme of the fronts.
VITA SACKVILLE-WEST
This new series design for Vita Sackville-West was produced by illustrator Gosia Herba
All Passion Spent and The Edwardians are out tomorrow, followed by Pepita later on in the year and are published by Vintage Classics.
FEN - Daisy Johnson
We have partnered with Foyles to produce an exclusive signed and numbered limited edition sampler of 250 copies containing the first two stories, ‘Starver’ and 'Blood Rites’ from Daisy Johnson’s forthcoming debut collection, Fen.
The first 100 copies went on sale and sold out within a day. To purchase a copy here is a link to the Foyles website.
Fen is due to be published by Jonathan Cape in June 2016.
Cédric Villani – Birth of A Theorem
Vintage will be publishing Cédric’s ‘Birth of a Theorem’ in paperback this month, so we reinvented the cover with the aim of offering an insight into his world… Each of the die-cut peep-holes reveals part of the portrait of Cédric on the page beneath, which in turn relates to the equation next to it… The answers to the equations lie on the page beneath his portrait, but you’ll need to get a copy to find out more!
If you can’t get enough of Cédric - hear him discussing how creativity happens on the RSA website - with a wonderful animation by Aurelia Lange.
INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
International Women’s Day aims to celebrates the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of females. So what better way to show our support than by showcasing a selection of our titles all of which have been designed, illustrated and written by women? Here are our top picks:
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - featuring the photography of Sarah Gillespie and the lettering by Lily Jones
Ladies of Lyndon by Margaret Kennedy – illustrated by Rikka Sormunen
The Grace Keepers by Kirsty Logan – designed by Suzanne Dean and illustrated by Felicita Sala
The Country of Ice Cream Star by Sandra Newman – designed by Julia Connolly
Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen – illustrated by Leanne Shapton
A HOUSE FULL OF DAUGHTERS - Juliet Nicolson
All families have their myths and legends. For many years renowned historian Juliet Nicolson accepted hers – the dangerous beauty of Juliet’s flamenco dancing great-great-grandmother Pepita, the flirty manipulation of her great-grandmother Victoria, the infamous eccentricity of her grandmother Vita, her mother’s Tory-conventional background.
But then she began to question, and as she did, she sifted fact from fiction, uncovering details and secrets long held out of sight.
A House Full of Daughters is an investigation into the nature of family, memory, the past – and, above all, love. Taking us through seven generations of women, it brings messages of truth and hope for us all.
The cover was designed by Cressida Bell and is published by Chatto & Windus on 24th March.
AT THE EXISTENTIALIST CAFÉ – Sarah Bakewell
This is an offbeat journey through the story of modern existentialism by the author of How To Live. It blends philosophy with biography, and asks what existentialist ideas might have to offer us today.
For the jacket we worked with illustrator Simone Massoni who we thought could perfectly capture the Parisian café scene of the 1930′s. The front cover features Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus. We liked Simone’s playful characterisation so much that we asked him to illustrate all of the key players in this radical-thinking movement for the back cover.
MR KAFKA AND OTHER TALES - Bohumil Hrabal
In 2009 illustrator Mio Matsumoto illustrated I served the King of England and Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age. She has carried on this beautiful and eye catching series style with Mr Kafka and Other Tales which is published on Thursday by Vintage Classics
THE ILIAD - Homer
Published by Vintage Classics on 25th February is the new translation by Caroline Alexander of Homer’s epic The Iliad.
The result of three thousand years of story-telling, Homer’s epic tale of the fall of Troy has resonated with every age and every human conflict: this is The Iliad at its most electrifying and vital. A story of enduring power; magnetic characters defined by stirring and momentous speeches; a panorama of human lives locked in a heroic struggle beneath a mischievous or indifferent heaven. Above all, this is a tale of the devastation, waste and pity of war.
The jacket shows an engraving of fighting lions after Heywood Hardy. Men fighting like lions is a recurring simile in the poem so the engraving is an appropriate and compelling image for the book. The title of the engraving is perfectly apposite: Fierce as conflicting fires the combat burns…
Hagseed – Margaret Atwood
In Margaret Atwood’s ‘novel take’ on Shakespeare’s original, theatre director Felix has been unceremoniously ousted from his role as Artistic Director of the Makeshiweg Theatre. When he lands a job teaching theatre in a prison, the possibiltity of revenge presents itself – and his cast find themselves taking part in an interactive and illusion-ridden version of The Tempest that will change their lives forever.
Vladimir Zimakov’s wonderfully imagined Caliban is the centrepiece to this latest Hogarth Shakespeare novel. Check out more of his illustrations at http://www.vladimirzimakov.com/.
Hagseed will be published by Hogarth Press in October.
THE BUTTON BOX - Lynn Knight
An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight’s button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky sixties-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother’s first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story.
The Button Box traces the story of women at home and in work from pre-First World War domesticity, through the first clerical girls in silk blouses, to the delights of beading and glamour in the thirties to short skirts and sexual liberation in the sixties.
THOMAS AND MARY - Tim Parks
‘Somehow it seemed to him the only thing that would really solve the
problem would be to return to the sea and find the old ring with their
names and the wedding date engraved inside, in 22-carat gold, and put it
on again and then the world would magically return to what it had been
before. Many years before.
This did not happen.’
This cover is beautifully illustrated by Sara Mulvanny
Published today by Harvill Secker
WHEN BREATH BECOMES AIR - Paul Kalanithi
At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s training
as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with inoperable lung
cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, the next he was a
patient struggling to live.
Lottie Davies, the cover photographer, gives
a behind-the-scenes view of a commission.
“I was sent a clear brief, all the
details had to be considered in order to make sure the photographs reflected
the mood and intention of the idea. The best ideas are often very simple, which
requires me as a photographer to have a light touch, while making sure that
everything is present in the image.
For the shoot we needed a surgeon’s
gown, mask and hat, and a patient’s examination gown. The
key was that each image, would feature a tied bow, so that defined my costume
search. I searched in the US and UK, but it was hard to find patients’ gown
with ties, so I ended up sewing them on myself.
We shot the photographs in the ‘Wellbeing Room’ at Random House, I brought in a background, lights and so on. We had our actor, and my stylist Conrad came to cut the hair to exactly the style we needed. I had an idea to give the images an extra touch, which was to take a few frames on large format film, using my 5"x4" Wista field camera. It’s a beautiful thing, made with brass and rosewood, and with a few sheets of Kodak negative film, it makes lovely photographs. Without getting all technical, large format film has a softness, a clarity and a quality which digital just hasn’t reached yet, in my opinion. Yes, it’s fiddly, but it’s worth it, I think. And happily, Vintage agreed.”
Breath Becomes Air is out today and published by Bodley Head for more information here is a short video
