The Stranger Book Covers
When assigned with recreating book covers, I immediately revisited Albert Camus’ signature novel. The book covers I created were lots of fun to design & emphasized the some of the major themes of the story.
For a novel I’ve read multiple times throughout college, in both English & French, one of my biggest disappointments were how unusually boring most of its published covers were. They would cover the generally same theme & symbolism of the climax of the plot, when Meursault assassinates someone on the beach & blames it on the glaring sun, but they rarely caught the audience’s eye. Many of those published covers barely give the idea of what the story is about.
For this cover, I wanted to depart from the sun motif and focus on the setting of the murder & the weapon used. This cover immediately depicts the novel as a murder mystery upon passing eyes, and considering half the novel does revolve around why Meursault did it, the scenery fits.
There’s a lot of natural activity on beaches, as the waves & wind will quickly engulf evidence from a crime scene. I placed the gun as the focal point of the frame, covered in sand next to the eroding footprints. I imagined what would the scene look like if Meursault dropped his gun from his right hand and continued walking from the sheer confusion of his actions.
For this cover, I brought back the glaring sun motif as an inspiration to the one created Helen Yentus, which is definitely my favorite published book cover for the novel yet.
Instead of just the sun & its rays reaching each edge of the cover, I included the silhouette of Meursault’s hand shielding himself from the intense glare that blinded him to disorientation & frustration. I aimed for the point of view connection with the reader. It’s difficult to connect & sympathize with a character like Meursault, but we can all relate to how it feels to accidentally look directly at the sun on a hot summer’s day and immediately regret it.
Credit:
Book cover mockups by Mark from Covervault.