Design your own Murakami book cover

Suzanne Dean has created a cover design for Haruki Murakami’s new novel, which comes with a pack of stickers so readers can ‘design’ their own covers.

Book cover

First editions of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage will come with a pack of stickers designed by five Japanese illustrators.

Tsukuru translates as ‘to make’ or ‘to build’, and Dean says this influenced the cover design.

Each illustrator was given a character from the novel and asked to create stickers that reflect these characters.

Mio Matsumoto illustrated Colorless, Fumio Obata took on Blue, Ryu Itadani created Red, Natsko Seki had White and Shinko Okuhara created the illustrations for Black.

Dean says, ‘My young son’s delight in using stickers everywhere started me thinking about this.

‘I had seen stickers used on Royal Mail stamps, on CDs and, of course, in children’s books, but I didn’t think they had been incorporated into adult fiction.’

Book cover

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is published by Harvill Secker on 20 August.

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