Book covers around the world: A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami

Welcome to a new bookish journey around the world! This post presents book covers of A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami. Reading this book was a very interesting experience (in a good way!), so I was curious to see how its covers are depicted all over the world.

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.

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Let’s start with the most basic and most common covers – with real sheep depicted on them. There are plenty of covers with images of real sheep, most of them using a light color palette (snow-ish!) with a contrasting star – red or black. The first cover below (on the left) is the edition I actually read.

The next cluster of book covers is my favourite one – covers with geometrical / abstract illustrations. The Japanese cover is the first edition of the book and I find it quite colorful and suggestive. The Chinese cover has an abstract depiction of a sheep. The next 2 covers – the English and the French – are among the very few that do not have any sheep on them! (or maybe I don’t see it?). The French cover does not even have THE star!

Continuing with an abstract tone, there are also covers with a more minimalist design. Regarding the Thai cover, I am not 100% sure it is a cover of a published book or it is an interpretation – anyway, I like it a lot! The Dutch cover combines the natural sheep horns with a plain background, while the English book cover has a more modern approach (and it is the book cover I’ve seen the most in bookstores in Europe).

Next are the romantic and dreamy vibes. The first French cover depicts a real sheep with a lovely flowery background, while the second French cover is also plant-based, with no sheep nor star on it. The Romanian book cover is quite interesting, illustrating a wooden sculpture of the sheep.

Slowly but surely we transition to the weirdest book covers. Let’s start with the trippy illustrations. While the Vietnamese cover focuses on a visual play of semi-circles, the English cover is quite scary and hallucinating … on the bottom part is is written “3D glasses included”, so I imagine it’s has more trippy images inside. The Spanish illustration is also weird, suggesting a more devilish side of the sheep.

The weird designs are not over! The Turkish covers depicts an old man with a snowy beard (no sheep, no star) – I personally do not understand its meaning in connection with the story. The German cover illustrates the sheep like a god (or devil!?), while the Bulgarian cover shows a funny-looking sheep on a strong yellow background.

To end the journey on a more positive note, here we have the childish and playful illustrations. The Finnish cover has a nice font that reminds me of cartoons, and also bets on the yellow touches. The Japanese and Russian covers are even more playful – they could successfully be the covers of a comic book (specially the Russian one!).

To sum up, most covers of “A Wild Sheep Chase” by Haruki Murakami depict a sheep (surprise!) from a different views – from geometrical to minimalist, from playful to god-like. However, there are also few covers that do not point to the sheep theme. All in all, I would say that “A Wild Sheep Chase” benefits from a variety of covers and I can conclude that their designers were quite creative 🙂

My favourite covers are Thai cover and the English geometrical & colorful cover. What are your favourites? Do you know also other interesting covers of “A Wild Sheep Chase”?

Check out this post on 99designs about that analyzes the techniques behind various editions of Murakami’s book covers.

‘Till next time … happy reading!

Georgiana

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Images Japanese | Chinese |  English | French | Thai | Dutch | English | Vietnamese | English | Spanish | Finnish | Japanese | Russian | English | Persan | Turkish | German | Bulgarian | French | French | Romanian