There is a saying — ‘dont judge a book by its cover’. But when the covers are elaborate stories in themselves, one can no longer separate them from the narrative within. When Sunandini Banerjee, senior editor and graphic designer, Seagull Books, designs a cover, it becomes more than an image wrapping a book. Through collage, abstraction, and illustration, her covers transform books by authors from different cultures and continents into symbolic visual narratives that often stay with a reader as much as the words within them.
Sunandini Banerjee
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In her ongoing exhibition Art of the Book, at DakshinaChitra, one can see some iconic book covers designed and curated by Sunandini, where the covers become a dialogue between image and text. Founded by Naveen Kishore in 1982, Seagull Books is an independent publishing house that has built a catalogue that spans continents and disciplines. The exhibition traces that journey through covers for books by writers including Mahasweta Devi, Romila Thapar, Christoph Ransmayr, László Krasznahorkai, Satish Alekar, Nabarun Bhattacharya and Dominique Noguez, offering a glimpse into nearly four decades of independent publishing.
Book covers from Art of the Book exhibition at DakshinaChitra Museum
