Publisher Spotlight #1: Restless Books

Being the first in a series looking at recent line-wide work by publishers who are doing most excellent work

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Restless Books launched a few years ago as an ebook company specialising in translations, but fortunately for lovers of both good books and good design they have started releasing paper versions of their books--and they publish some amazing books.

I'll focus here on the four paperbacks in their Cuban Science Fiction series (that they should have such a specific series at all shows how different they are to most publishers), with two books each from Agustín de Rojas and the monosyllabically named Yoss.









All four have covers designed by Cuban-American designer Edel Rodriguez, and I love the way they neither neglect their SF-ness nor fall into cliche in any way. Rodriguez was also responsible for these lovely Chinua Achebe covers a few years ago.

These books are as interesting as they are inviting, proper SF of ideas with fine writing, and you suspect their authors have utilised speculative fiction much as the wonderful Strugatsky brothers did: as an effective way of exploring humanity and ideas under a repressive government.

Restless doesn't only do Cuban sci-fi, though. Here is a selection of some of their other best covers...

Achebe All Over

In January, Penguin UK plans to relaunch their Chinua Achebe backlist. Instead of the current photographic covers, they're using bold, dramatic illustrations, with a limited palette of only three earthy colours.

 

 

 

 

These illustrations were originally created for Achebe's US covers, from Anchor, where there are a couple of extras to be found. The designer credited is Edel Rodriguez.

 

 

 

 

 

I really like these images. Arrow of God and No Longer at Ease, in particular, remind me of the work of Saul Bass (see this post for more)...

Penguin's catalogue for 2010 appeared online briefly over the weekend, before reverting to 2009. While it was up I managed to grab a few other covers, which I'll post in upcoming days.

UPDATE: The Achebe cover designer, Edel Rodriguez, got in touch to say "I did all of the illustrations and hand lettering for the original versions. I had to rework the images to fit them in the Penguin UK templates. They have a certain type treatment and color palette that is part of their format. Naturally, I prefer my originals, more space, less crowded, etc. But I understood why things had to change for the Penguin UK versions."