The Self in Our Times

Book Cover design for author Farhan Shaikh.

I designed the book cover for The Self in Our Times by author Farhan Shaikh, a collection of seven independent stories about familiar and unfamiliar lives in the 21st century. The stories explore home, loss, love and the self, finding the universal in the local.

The cover brings objects and motifs from the stories together, stitched onto a piece of khadi fabric. Khadi, India’s hand-spun, hand-woven cloth, felt right as the base: like the book, it is made of many separate threads that only become whole when woven together. Each stitched element comes from one of the stories, so the cover works as a map of the collection, seven stories, held together by one fabric.

Author: Farhan Shaikh · Publisher: APK Publishers LLP · Year: 2021 · Role: Book cover designer · Available on Amazon