Chronic City

Chronic City
By Jonathan Lethem
Cover design by Faber, 2009

In contrast to the American edition, published by Doubleday, Faber has opted for a distinctively bold look for cult novelist Jonathan Lethem’s new work. The American edition used an isometric projection of Manhattan, giving an angle and overview similar to a computer game such as SimCity. It ties cleverly with the novel’s themes, but given the resemblance to the UK edition of Glen David Gold’s Sunnyside, released last year, it’s easy to see why Faber opted for something more dramatic.

Faber’s cover shows a Dayglo tiger in orange, black and white, maw agape. On closer inspection, its fangs are revealed to be cut-up Manhattan skylines. The title, hiply uncapitalised, nestles between the beast’s teeth. It is a design that incrementally unveils more and more relevance as the reader progresses through the novel.

Fluorescent tangerine seems wholly appropriate for Lethem’s hyperactive tale, which features characters with such outré names as Chase Insteadman, Perkus Tooth and Georgina Hawkmanaji.

In the course of the novel, rumours spread of a giant tiger terrorising Manhattan. Is it an urban myth or a piece of arcane government spin? The cover, with its collage and hazy borders, is clearly an impression of a tiger, rather than a photograph, just as the tiger’s own ontological ambiguity shimmers through the book. The pointillist style is reminiscent of pixellated images, hinting at the novel’s themes of virtuality and media saturation. But the real wit of the design is the teeth. The city is a trap, a vice, a biting entity. It is doubled and mirrored, its own opposite and complement.

Faber previously reissued Lethem’s earlier novels in uniform covers, which perhaps played too much on his reputation as an author of literary sci-fi. This design still conveys that legacy but in a far more eye-catching and subtle manner.