The year-end lists of best books are starting off early and two books published by Permanent Black (an independent press based in India) featured in in The Guardian. These are Partha Chatterjee's The Black Hole of Empire and Arvind K. Mehrotra's Partial Recall.
One of my secret pleasures about Partial Recall is that I actually drew its cover.
My second secret pleasure is that I managed to insert my dog, Biscoot, into the picture. She's sleeping on that cushion at the reader's feet.
Then I felt really enthusiastic and drew endpapers for it as well. It shows the little owl that is also on the spine of the book -- you can see it in the picture below.
And now I think it's the most beautiful book we've ever made at Permanent Black....
I design all of the covers for our books but it's not often that I get to draw one, either because that wouldn't be appropriate for the book or because authors would not put up with my artistic efforts. Arvind, the author of Partial Recall, was clear in his head about the kind of look he wanted for the cover (old-fashioned, evoking old literary worlds) and yet he was absolutely happy to let me have the freedom to figure it out for myself. That's the combination every cover designer longs for.
One of my secret pleasures about Partial Recall is that I actually drew its cover.
My second secret pleasure is that I managed to insert my dog, Biscoot, into the picture. She's sleeping on that cushion at the reader's feet.
Then I felt really enthusiastic and drew endpapers for it as well. It shows the little owl that is also on the spine of the book -- you can see it in the picture below.
And now I think it's the most beautiful book we've ever made at Permanent Black....
I design all of the covers for our books but it's not often that I get to draw one, either because that wouldn't be appropriate for the book or because authors would not put up with my artistic efforts. Arvind, the author of Partial Recall, was clear in his head about the kind of look he wanted for the cover (old-fashioned, evoking old literary worlds) and yet he was absolutely happy to let me have the freedom to figure it out for myself. That's the combination every cover designer longs for.