Creation Lake

Bound by Nicky Oliver

Creation Lake
by Rachel Kushner
Jonathan Cape, an imprint of Vintage - Penguin Random House
Published 2024
Bound 2024
Dimensions: 222 x 140 x 44mm

Booker Prize Binding 2024

Full Fair goatskin leather. Hand dyed and decorated with foil tooling and back pared onlays. Edges decorated with graphite and pigment. Hand sewn double endbands. Dyed paper edge-to-edge doublures and suede flyleaves.

It can be a bit of a challenge binding a Booker book when it reads like a movie; each paragraph offering up rich and vivid scenes. I decided to choose the elements which were the strongest for me: Neanderthal cave drawings, the mega-basins of water, corn, magnesium crystals, the rows of poplar trees, the big and little dippers and the North Star - Polaris.

I wanted the overall feeling to be reminiscent of cave drawing with the inclusion of the other ingredients, depicted in a naïve and semi-graphic way. In addition, the majority of this story is set in France, so I included the French flag within the head end-band.

You can see more of Nicky's work on her web site, Black Fox Bindery and on Instagram at @blackfoxbindery.