Title : ( To Judge a Book by its Cover: Religio-Cultural Myth on the Cover of Iranian War Literature )
Authors: Azra Ghandeharion , MARYAMOSSADAT MOOSAVI TAKIEH ,
Full TextAbstract
The present study examines two book covers to discover how their telling images and condensed tales of war are related to the books’ interior content. We scrutinize A’zam Hosseini’s Da (2008) and its English translation by Paul Sprachman, One Woman’s War: Da (Mother) (2014). Since Da has been standing in Iranian best sellers list for a decade, it is considered as a paragon of popular national literature. Given the proclivity of books’ designers to exploit marketing strategies on the covers, the study reflects on how they harness the power of those strategies for the greatest ideological gain. We demonstrate how designers utilise paratextual elements as external and commercial mediators of the inside text, thereby conjuring up founding myths of individual and national Iranian identity. It is concluded, against the famous old saying, that a book is designed to be judged by its cover.
Keywords
, Iranian War Literature, One Woman’s War, Intertextuality, book marketing, book cover
@article{paperid:1080830,
author = {Ghandeharion, Azra and MOOSAVI TAKIEH, MARYAMOSSADAT},
title = {To Judge a Book by its Cover: Religio-Cultural Myth on the Cover of Iranian War Literature},
journal = {Journal of Literary Studies},
year = {2020},
volume = {36},
number = {2},
month = {April},
issn = {0256-4718},
pages = {49--66},
numpages = {17},
keywords = {Iranian War Literature; One Woman’s War; Intertextuality; book marketing; book cover},
}
%0 Journal Article
%T To Judge a Book by its Cover: Religio-Cultural Myth on the Cover of Iranian War Literature
%A Ghandeharion, Azra
%A MOOSAVI TAKIEH, MARYAMOSSADAT
%J Journal of Literary Studies
%@ 0256-4718
%D 2020
