The Friday Face-Off: A cover featuring a desert landscape

April 5, 2019 2 Comments

Book Reviews, Fiction

The meme The Friday Face-Off was originally created by Books by Proxy. Each week bloggers showcase books with covers centred around a weekly theme. You can visit Lynn’s Books for a list of upcoming themes. Join in the fun each Friday by finding a book whose cover is based on the theme!

This week’s theme:  ‘nomad is an island’ – A cover featuring a desert landscape.

My choice here was somehow obliged, theme-wise: the amazing Italian novel ‘Il Deserto dei Tartari’, by Dino Buzzati, first published in 1940 and generally translated as ‘The Tartar Steppe’ in English. It was, among other things, included in Le Monde‘s list of 100 most influential books of the XX century, and it well deserves it. The book features, unsurprisingly, a desolate desert that a young officer, Giovanni Drogo, stares at from an old border fortress. Here’s my pick of some of the (many) covers.



Which one is your favourite? I must say I am partial to the last one, with Coetzee’s quote on the blue cover.

2 Comments

  1. maddalena@spaceandsorcery

    The image in the third row is the one that most gives the feeling of loneliness thanks to that shape that hints at a fort but might as well be an abandoned ruin… 🙂

    Reply ↓
    1. Steph P. Bianchini (Post author)

      I agree. I also think it reflects well the atmosphere of this amazing book…

      Reply ↓

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