HARUKI MURAKAMI - Sticker Competition
Harvill Secker first editions of Colorless Tsukuru and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami include a special sheet of stickers designed by five Japanese illustrators. Tsukuru means ‘to make’ or ‘to build’, and we’re challenging you to use the stickers to create your own personalised cover and enter our competition to win a limited edition screen print of the original front cover signed by Haruki Murakami.
To enter, email a photograph of your sticker design as a 300dpi jpeg to vintagebooks@randomhouse.co.uk by 31st August. All the entries will be added to our special album ‘Sticker Competition’ on the Murakami Facebook Page where you can also vote for your favourites. The book cover with the most ‘likes’ on 31st August will be crowned the winner. A selection of the best entries as voted for by you will also be exhibited at Waterstones Piccadilly in London on 30th August at Haruki Murakami’s public signing.
For some inspiration to get you started, we’ve had a go ourselves and animated the process above. Entries open on 12th August when the Harvill Secker edition is available to buy.

MURAKAMI IS COMING
SHAKESPEARE FOR GROWN-UPS - E. Foley and B. Coates
With lively in-depth chapters on all his key works, Shakespeare for Grown-ups is the only guide to the Scribe you’ll ever need. Covering everything from the historical context of his writing and personal life to his most famous speeches, quotations, phrases and words that have entered general usage today.
We wanted to give the cover a bold, graphic approach, with a recognisable image and a modern twist. The endpapers incorporate some of the Shakespearian phrases we still use today.
And ‘as luck would have it’ you can download the endpapers to print out and use as a poster.
Published by Square Peg on the 4th September
THUNDERSTRUCK & OTHER STORIES - Elizabeth McCracken
From the author of the beloved novel The Giant’s House comes a beautiful new story collection.
In Elizabeth McCracken’s universe, heartache is always interwoven with strange, charmed moments of joy - an unexpected conversation with small children, the gift of a parrot with a bad French accent - that remind us of the wonder and mystery of being alive.
The author herself asked if we would consider a photograph by Francesca Woodman for her jacket and we were delighted with the idea, and even more delighted when the photographer’s estate kindly granted us permission.
Thunderstruck & Other Stories is published by Jonathan Cape.
THIS SHOULD BE WRITTEN IN THE PRESENT TENSE by Helle Helle
‘Why does one always read Helle Helle’s books about the seemingly humdrum lives of lonely, sleepless women in the back of beyond with the kind of obsession normally reserved for well-turned thrillers?’ Politiken
By one of the Denmark’s foremost and most popular novelists comes This Should Be Written in the Present Tense.
Abstract seems to work best for this book. Shown here are the various designs that were worked up for the jacket, the design with the coloured stripes being the one finally chosen.
This mesmerizing novel will published in November by Harvill Secker.
J - Howard Jacobson
J is set in the future, a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited.
J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying.
David Hughes was commissioned to paint a large J with two stripes of red to run across the spine of the letter. The J needed to fill the page. It needed to convey an underlying tension – to be dynamic with the energy seeping into the background.
Of course it wasn’t as straight forward as envisaged. Here are David’s comments on painting the J.
“After 8 attempts with ink and the like I slipped into my artist’s smock and beret, went over to the easel and with a sweep or two of the brush painted the letter J in black oil paint on lining paper (wallpaper). Voi-la`! Much better to paint your masterpiece standing up…”
Published by Jonathan Cape in September 2014
ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE – Robert M. PIrsig
Looking to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Robert Pirsig’s modern classic, Vintage are publishing this rejacketed edition in January 2015.
It’s a difficult novel to design a cover for, however the narrator’s intention to find a perception of the world that embraces both ‘rational’ and 'romantic’ values offered a solution.
The idea was to divide the motorcycle into component parts where each individual panel could be seen as a separate piece of artwork. Originally the artwork was intended to be more abstract, with the earlier shapes flat and simplistic, however redrawing the motorcycle added an organic element that was somewhat lacking. Essentially the 'rational’ is represented by the motorcycle, technology and the component parts. As for the 'romantic’? – well, that’s for you to decide!
THE LAUGHING MONSTERS - Denis Johnson
Sometimes a book you are working on and an exhibition collide. Denis Johnson’s new contemporary spy thriller set in Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo needed a great jacket photograph at the same time as the Photographer’s Gallery put on show the Deutshe Borse Prize. Richard Mosse was one of the four shortlisted artists and the eventual winner. His photographs of the tragedy of war in DRC were shot on discontinued military surveillance film. This registers an invisible spectrum of infrared light creating just the right disorientating effect to encapsulate to perfection all we wanted to express about Denis Johnson’s haunting tale.
The Laughing Monsters is published by Harvill Secker in February 2015
THE NARROW ROAD TO THE DEEP NORTH - Richard Flanagan
Forever after, there were for them only two sorts of men: the men who were on the Line, and the rest of humanity, who were not.
In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Burma Death Railway, surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle’s young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever.
Hailed as a masterpiece, Richard Flanagan’s epic novel tells the unforgettable story of one man’s reckoning with the truth.
The scarlet camellia used in the jacket design has a particular significance in the story and also provides a strong and bold visual statement. The colour-printed woodblock engraving is (not inappropriately) by the Japanese botanist Kan’en Iwasaki and was sourced from Science and Society Picture Library.
Published by Chatto and Windus in July.
UKRAINE DIARIES - Andrey Kurkov
Ukraine Diaries is acclaimed writer Andrey Kurkov’s first-hand account of the crisis in his country. Written from his flat in Kiev, just 500 metres away from Independence Square, Kurkov can smell the burning barricades and hear the sounds of grenades and gunshot.
The photograph on the cover of the book is by Larry Towell. He photographed the events in Maidan Square as they unfolded often using a 35 mm panoramic camera. Towell is from the Magnum cooperative, and he was joined by fellow Magnum photographers Gueorgui Pinkhassov and Jerome Sessini in Ukraine. They worked independently whilst looking out for each other. They had a common goal in recording this moment of social and political upheaval but each photographer’s work has a unique perspective.
Published by Harvill Secker on 31 July 2014
MONEY - Felix Martin
‘What is money, and how does it work?
The conventional answer is that people once used sugar in the West Indies, tobacco in Virginia, and dried cod in Newfoundland, and that today’s financial universe evolved from barter.
Unfortunately, this story is wrong. And not just wrong, but dangerous.’
When designing the cover we tried a few different routes as can be seen above. Each version whether typographical, illustrative or photographic attempts to challenge our conception of what money actually is.
So what is money?
Published by Vintage Books on 3rd July.
IN AMERICA: Travels with John Steinbeck - Geert Mak
In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green GMC pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans. The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books.
Fifty years later, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck’s home with his wife and his sat-nav Sandy. He retraces Steinbeck’s footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest, stumbling across glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, he searches for the roots of America and what remains of the restless, prosperous world Steinbeck describes.
We commissioned Jon McNaught to create this beautiful wrap-around illustration for the jacket.
Published by Harvill Secker in November.
CIDER WITH ROSIE Laurie Lee
The day Rosie Brudock decided to take me in hand was a motionless day of summer, creamy, hazy, and amber-coloured, with the beech trees standing in heavy sunlight as though clogged with wild wet honey. It was the time of hay-making…
Laurie Lee was born 100 years ago today.
To mark his centenary year Vintage Classics have published a beautiful special hardback edition of his memoir of his childhood in Gloucestershire. This edition has new illustrations by Mark Hearld to complement the originals by John Ward. The stunning jacket artwork is also by Hearld whose work is inspired by the fauna and flora of the British countryside, and which perfectly evokes the lush natural world described by Lee.
JANE AUSTEN VINTAGE CLASSICS
Jane Austen’s novels maintain a universally enduring appeal right up to this day and are loved both in print and as film and TV adaptations.
The aim for this updated set was to create a desirable look that would convey a modern and brave take on Austen’s traditional tales of love, family and status within society.
The illustrator of the series Leanne Shapton had this to say about her style:
“The nice thing about patterns is that they can evoke a certain mood or tone, but also be neutral. I loved creating a consistent handwritten label style for the six books and then thinking of which patterns might obliquely suit the titles. I think the patterns we chose quietly compliment and correspond to the stories. My favorite is Mansfield Park.”
The full set comprising of Emma, Mansfield Park, Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility are published this week.
