What do you get when you combine enthusiasm for book covers with desire to travel? You guessed: book covers around the world!
Few weeks ago I read “The Pearl” by John Steinbeck and I also wrote a book review for Steinebeck’s novella. Being a very well-known book, the book has been translated in many languages … each translation having its own special cover design. I’ve made a selection of 13 (lucky 13!) book covers from different countries that you can check out below.
Note: if you haven’t read the book, I recommend you to first get acquainted with the basic storyline, to better understand the cover illustrations and the remarks I wrote for each of them.
To begin with, this is how the first edition looked like in 1947:
Since then, many English editions of the book were published, some of them having a more modern and symbolic approach toward the cover design:
I’ve also included covers from Latin countries (Romania, Spain, and Portugal). These seem to stick to the boat concept and use blue color tones.
Northern European countries have seem to have more abstract designs of the book covers. While the Finnish and Danish editions use blue covers and relate to the story (using a pearl and waves), the Swedish edition uses solar colors and seems a bit unconnected, from my point of view.
You can also see three covers of Asian editions: Turkey, Japan, and Korea. I thin the most unusual book cover is the Korean one, which is quite erotic and does not really depict any aspect of the book.
I hope you enjoyed this journey around the world!
Which one is your favourite cover? My favourite one is the English edition I placed on the left, I like the light colours and the way the pearl diver is depicted 🙂
‘Till next time … happy reading!
Georgiana
Images sources: English edition | English edition | English edition | Romanian edition| Spanish edition | Portuguese edition |Swedish edition | Finnish edition | Danish edition | Turkish edition | Japanese edition | Korean edition
Readers' High Tea 
The Korean cover seems a bit far-fetched… I think the Danish edition is quite attractive, without giving too much away.
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