The Jewish Messiah
Design by Rodrigo Corral Design / Christopher Brand
Seeing this on the new books table, three thoughts rapidly crossed my mind: 1) Great, another book about Nazis. 2) Wait, is that a pelican's head? 3) The Jewish Messiah? Cool. (Ever since reading Chabon's Yiddish Policeman's Union I've been wondering what's up with that.)
I'm not sure that the provocativeness of this jacket comes across here, but set out among other books, it begs you to pick it up. And when you do start reading, you'll find sexual promiscuity, a botched circumcision and a lost testicle, translating Mein Kampf into Yiddish, suicide, Israeli politics and nuclear weapons. Are you in? I am. For reading the book, that is -- not for losing a testicle.
So what's up with the pelican? Not sure, but I did find this on Wikipedia: "In medieval Europe, the pelican was thought to be particularly attentive to her young, to the point of providing her own blood when no other food was available. As a result, the pelican became a symbol of the Passion of Jesus and of the Eucharist...Another version of this is that the pelican used to kill its young and then resurrect them with its blood, this being analogous to the sacrifice of Jesus."
A wonderfully and rather shockingly odd jacket for a book that is clearly not everyone's cup of tea.
8 comments:
I'm sold.
yeah. This is a picker-upper. Really solid graphics and colors. Everything else is probably revealed in the text on some level.
I think you rather hit the nail on the head with your last sentence. Shockingly odd is not everyone's cup of tea.
I'm convinced you can judge a book by it's cover.
HOLY SHIT!
Incredible.
It could also be a subtle nod to the Polish eagle, at least in the way the bird is positioned/posed, which is very similar to the .
Sorry, I was trying to link to the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coat_of_arms_of_Poland
It's a pelican because in the book the main character's sister believes that Messiah comes in the form of a pelican. Read the book and you'll know.
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