Belle Place presents the best book covers of August
Vogliamo Tutto (We Want Everything) by Nanni Balestrini
This book from Italian writer Nanni Balestrini was first published in 1971. Vogliamo Tutto (We Want Everything) focuses on the ‘hot autumn of 1969’ that started with a big strike at Fiat, Turin, and sparked nearly 10 years of radical action in Italy. This is the first English translation of the work, and is published by a new Melbourne-based press, Telephone Publishing. The book is designed by Warren Taylor, a lecturer in Communication Design at MADA (Monash Art Design & Architecture) and founder of The Narrows. The dust jacket can be unfolded to reveal a poster-sized blueprint of the Fiat factory.
What We See When We Read by Peter Mendelsund
What We See When We Read is a fully illustrated exploration into how we visualise images from reading works of literature. The thumbnail of this book cover doesn’t really do the work justice. If you find the book in our Carlton shop, you’ll see the gold keyhole, set against a plain black cover, is reflective and catches the light. Peter Mendelsund is the associate art director at Knopf, and is regarded as one of the top book designers working today. You can scroll through his superb collections of work here.
The Night Guest by Fiona McFarlane
This is the second edition of Fiona McFarlane’s The Night Guest . I really liked the first-edition cover, though this edition is perhaps more successful, as it better portrays the seaside setting of the novel. The layout also lends itself well to providing space for quotes from the positive reviews that now surround McFarlane’s debut. The moody, painterly quality of the cover art nicely reflects the slippage of memory that afflicts the novel’s protagonist, Ruth, and positioning a tiger in the window provides intrigue.
