Captain Corelli’s Mandolin
By Louis de Bernieres
Cover design by Jeff Fisher
Vintage 1998

Books change their covers with alarming regularity these days, as publishers target new markets. It is, however, sometimes possible for bestsellers, due to their huge popularity and the publisher’s fear of losing the “recognition factor”, to become synonymous with the first-edition cover, a phenomenon perhaps more typical of the relationship between pop music and its packaging. Jeff Fisher’s lyrical, illustrative 1998 design for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin falls into that category, despite the availability of a film tie-in version three years later.

While cover designs often depict an event from a book’s narrative, for this novel – with its intertwined themes of history, politics and love amid the ugliness of the second world war – Fisher merely suggests the complexity of events. In colour and composition, the design is reminiscent of Mediterranean pottery. There is no machine-set typography – the author and title are all painted renditions of 18th-century Italian types and share the same harmonious charm as their surroundings. Only Virago’s logo, a conveniently wobbly “V”, is standard, but blends in well. Around the mandolin are silhouettes – a soldier, animals, graves, a pierced heart – which hint at the book’s themes.

It would be a great cover given its sensitive treatment of the novel’s subject matter, however many copies it sold. But the fact that the book became a bestseller means it is now regarded as having revived interest in the use of illustration on book covers more generally, and hand-drawn type in particular.

I recently heard a well-known designer describe it as “the most influential cover design of the last 15 years”. Few would disagree.

Phil Baines is professor of typography at Central Saint Martins