Cover Design: The Sublime Object of Orientalism

Forthcoming from Hong Kong University Press

I’m so excited about my next book, that I am taking time out from what I am supposed to be doing right now (writing the book after this one), to delight in the final cover PDF that I have just received.

Here it is:

We had to make a strong case for the gnome, I can tell you. The designer, Phil, from Superstar, gave me loads of options, all of which were excellent - riffing widely on my title’s allusions to Slavoj Žižek’s Sublime Object of Ideology and Edward Said’s Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. But in the end, the gnome won.

And, if you read the book, it makes perfect sense for it to be such an image. Here’s a clue as to why, from the cover synopsis:

Finally, I am delighted with the wonderful endorsements from Professor Rachel Harrison from SOAS and Professor Adam Frank from Arkansas, whose first book - an autoethnography of learning taijiquan in Shanghai in the 1980s - was such an inspiration:

Anyway, I just wanted to share that. But now, I really must get back to work!

If you want information about the book or any sneak previews of any kind, just email me: BowmanP@cardiff.ac.uk.