The Clothing of Books

Description

How do you clothe a book? In this deeply personal reflection, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri explores the art of the book jacket from the perspectives of both reader and writer. Probing the complex relationships between text and image, author and designer, and art and commerce, Lahiri delves into the role of the uniform; explains what book jackets and design have come to mean to her; and how, sometimes, "the covers become a part of me."

Jhumpa Lahiri is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies, The Namesake, Unaccustomed Earth and The Lowland, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award; and a work of non-fiction, In Other Words. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori, the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia for In altre parole.

A writer of uncommon elegance and poise * New York Times * A writer of formidable powers and great depth of feeling * Observer * Enviable eloquence; each sentence is considered * Sunday Times * One of the most impressive writers in the U.S. * Daily Mail * Very serious, sincere and likeable -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times * Gorgeous, effortless prose ... and most of all, a quiet, emerging sense of humanity -- Khaled Hosseini Jhumpa Lahiri's spirited essay - the lectio magistralis for the 2015 Festival degli Scrittori in Florence - considers the sartorial fate of the text after it has left the author: how it is dressed by the designer * Nancy Campbell, Times Literary Supplement *