The Story of Book Covers

You can judge a book by its cover - this revised axiom is relevant when we discuss the topic of book covers. A Book cover captures the entire book with an image. A book cover designer should practice deep reading to understand the book's contents and design something based on that. The design on the book cover can be a metaphor for the whole book. Since I am interested in designing and playing with colours, book cover design is one area that has fascinated me. Some of my favourite book covers are - Manu S Pillai's The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin: Tales from Indian History, Poonachi by Perumal Murugan, The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa, Silent Travels by Benyamin, Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Lolita by Nabokov, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, and Malice by Keigo Higashino.  

Examining the book cover of 'At Night All Blood is Black' by David Diop, we are intrigued by the shadowy lean figure of a lone African soldier moving forward with a rifle in his hand.  A bayonet is fixed on the gun. He seems to be hunched forward because of the military rucksack on his back. The white circle in the centre represents the moon. The interplay of black and white reinforces the shadowy figure of the soldier. The bluish shades create a contrasting effect to delineate the human shape with the gun. 

 

Jo Walker designed the cover. When I visited the official website of this book designer, I realized that she is the one who had designed the book cover of The Vegetarian by Han Kang. Jo Walker is a professional book cover designer and has more than 20 years of experience designing book covers. She has worked with various publishing houses, including Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House, Granta and Harper Collins. Jo Walker has designed the covers of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's four books, including Americanah and Purple Hibiscus. She has created the book covers of the Nobel laureate Doris Lessing (The Golden Notebook) and the Letters to the Lady Upstairs by Marcel Proust. 

 

 

 

 

 

https://www.wired.com/2014/09/makes-brilliant-book-cover-master-explains/

The Man International Booker Prize - Celebrating the Author and the Translator

Man International Booker Prize complements the Man Booker Prize. The prize was awarded every two years. Since 2016, the award has been given annually. The prize money is 50,000 GBP. Earlier it was given in recognition of a writer's body of work rather than one title. Sine 2016, it is awarded to a single book translated to English. The prize money is shared between the author and the translator. Now the award is renamed the International Booker Prize. I was fortunate to meet and listen to the words of Jokha Alharthi, the Omani writer who won the award in 2019. I was attending an International Conference at PSMO college in Malapuram district in Kerala. Mrs Jokha Alharthi was the Keynote Speaker. The book which won her the award was Celestial Bodies. The translation of the book is available in Malayalam, and the translation was done by my good friend and well-wisher Ibrahim Badusha Wafi. 

 

Ruskin Press plays a pivotal role in publishing the translated works from different languages. David Diop's book 'At Night All Blood is Black' is translated by Anna Moschovakis. She is a poet, author and translator. This post introduces three translated books published by Pushkin Press.

 

No Place to Lay One's Hand by Françoise Frenkel - The preface to the book is written by Patrick Modiano. The story of Françoise Frenkel - a Polish Jew who opens her bookshop in Berlin, which was a dream project for her. The dream lasted only for two decades. Françoise flees to France due to Aryanization. When the war starts, she moves to Nice and is horrified by what she sees around her. The book is translated by Stephanie Smee. 

 

On Love and Tyranny - The Life and Politics of Hannah Arendt by Ann Heberlein How the ground-breaking work of Hannah Arendt was shaped by both her personal and outside world. The biography traces the journey of Hannah Arendt from Germany and then to Occupied France. The book is translated by Alice Menzies. 

 

The Limits of My Language - Meditation on Depression by Eva Meijer. The book deals with the treatment of depression and how it can influence our bodies. The book also tells us 'how to move on from our darkest thoughts. The translator is Antoinette Fawcett

What is after-the memory space?

After-the memory space is one man's dream to know more about memory studies, a field of study that has emerged in the recent past. The founder of after-the memory space is Premjith Mathew and he also serves as the chief investigator of the project. 

Memory Studies - A short note

 

Memory Studies - What it is or What it entails? It is a research field that explores both personal and collective memory. The possibility of an ‘entanglement’ of both these versions is bound to occur especially when we examine historical events like the Holocaust and the Partition of 1947. Memory studies is an interdisciplinary area of study. It borrows ideas and concepts from Sociology, Cultural Studies, Anthropology, Psychology, Architecture, Cognitive Sciences, Archaeology, History, Literature, etc. Memory is not just about remembering, it also deals with forgetting or erasures. Sometimes forgetting is induced by external forces like the State or it can be internal with the individual deciding not to remember certain traumatic and uneasy ones. Memory studies always operate in three levels - Personal, Collective, and Official. All these three interact with each other. Today, Memory Studies also explores the way technology enables remembering and forgetting. This is done in the context of current trend of ‘excessively commemorating personal events’ in the form of photographs (selfies), vlogs via social media platforms. The key areas in technology-driven memory studies are Digital Memory and Prosthetic memory.