Jackets Required: The End of the Jews
By Fwis -- Publishers Weekly, 4/2/2008 10:30:00 AM
This is the latest installment in a weekly column by Fwis, a graphic design group that blogs on book jacket design. The Fwis designers judge a recent book by its cover each week on PublishersWeekly.com.
Title: The End of the Jews: A Novel
Designer: Rodrigo Corral
Author: Adam Mansbach
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
The vertical graphic device of this cover communicates a great deal with minimal effort. Namely, it creates the tension of a partnered relationship where there was once the unity of a single area. This split, both through its implied concept and its hierarchically centered placement on the cover, makes it clear that the cut spine, and all the suggested metaphors therein, are central to the theme of the book. Broken partners, distant friends, a broken marriage—all of these are referenced through this simple device. And correctly so, in this case, as the book is almost exclusively about the relationships between partners of various sorts.
What is equally interesting is to compare this cover to others of a similar nature; covers which have made use of the strong vertical split
for their own purposes. The tightly cropped photo which comprises the vertical line on the cover of The Prisoner of Guantanamo effectively evokes a state of mind similar to that of the protagonist. Mercy Room (which also uses the spine of a book) uses the line as a means to create opposition and tension between the two figures. The cover for Isaac Newton, on the other hand, simply borrows from the subject's (the light spectrum) inherent format and places it in such a manner as to display its central role in the book.
