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.
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”?
‘Till next time … happy reading!
Georgiana
Images Japanese | Chinese | English | French | Thai | Dutch | English | Vietnamese | English | Spanish | Finnish | Japanese | Russian | English | Persan | Turkish | German | Bulgarian | French | French | Romanian
This is such a fun post! I remember reading a review of this novel, and I’ve been meaning to read it ever since. I like the English cover as well, but actually I find the Vietnamese quite fitting – weird and non-linear, isn’t that Murakami in a nutshell?
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I hope you will get to read the book! I agree that the Vietnamese cover depicts very well the style of Murakami, though I would argue it’s not very appealing for first-time readers … But once you know about Murakami, it’s definitely interesting!
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This book covers series is the best!
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Thanks a lot, I’m glad you enjoy it!
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Amazing covers in this series Georgiana! I also agree that the Vietnamese cover is the most accurate. 😉
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Thanks a lot, glad you enjoyed the covers!
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