The Thousand Autumns x 2: A Peek at the New David Mitchell
As a followup to my post last week about U.S. vs. U.K. covers, here's an advance look at one of the novels I'm most looking forward to this summer, David Mitchell's The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. The U.S. edition, which comes out in late June, is on the left, and the U.K. version, which comes out in May, is on the right. What do you think? I think they're both pretty ravishing--I loved the U.S. cover the moment I saw it, but I'm not sure: the U.K.'s might be even lovelier (and to be honest it makes the U.S. one look a little garish next to it). I look forward to seeing them in the flesh (well, the U.S. one at least, unless somebody sends me to London...).
I haven't cracked my advance copy of the book yet, but Jessica at Brooklyn's Greenlight Bookstore (and The Written Nerd) has. She opened it with trepidation, as Mitchell is her "Favorite Living Writer" (as he is for many, after Cloud Atlas)--what did she think? Well, there is one paragraph in her post in which every sentence begins, "I love ...". --Tom
Aging Lit Major on March 11, 2010 at 05:00 AM
Not having a clue about the book's contents and thus uninformed by it, I have to say that the American cover took me right back to my early childhood in San Francisco and the sense of wonder that the city's Asian community inspired through its influence on the art, sounds and landscape, while the British version connotes the scary remoteness of early exploration.