Sunday 3 March 2013

Varjak Paw Around The World

#1: Russia


One of the nicest things about publishing a book is watching it travel the world.  Varjak Paw has been translated into many languages; there are many different editions around the world.  One reader recently left me a link to pictures from the Russian edition (thanks, Ivan!), so I decided to do a series of posts about all these editions.

I'm going to start with the Russian one, but I'm interested to hear from Varjak fans in all countries.  Please write in and tell me - how does Varjak look in your country?  Are the publishers doing a good job with it?!  Authors generally don't get any say in how their work appears in translation, so it's very interesting for me to hear people's thoughts.

Here's the Russian front cover of Varjak Paw:


And here's the back cover:


I have to say, I think these covers are amazing.  Of course, I love Dave McKean's original covers, and I'm glad the Russian editions use his art inside the books, but it's great to see another take on it.  I think they did a good job with the sequel, too - here's the Russian front cover of The Outlaw Varjak Paw:


And here's the back, with an extraordinary image of Sally Bones:


What do my readers think?  Have the publishers done a good job?

3 comments:

Ivan said...

cool)
Frankly, I was surprised when I learned that the cover varjak in Russian and English books different. Russian book illustrations varjak the same, and made ​​Dave McKean.

SF Said said...

It is surprising how different these versions can be! But publishers in different countries often have different ideas about how the books should look, and the UK version is the only one I was involved with. So I'm always interested to hear what people think about them...

Anonymous said...

I am trying to get hold of a Ukranian version - can you point me in the right direction?