Carmen R. Balit on Designing Meena Kandasamy's Exquisite Cadavers
I was very passionate about this project from the start because the paperback edition of Meena’s previous book, When I Hit You – which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2018 – was the first cover I ever designed (more than two years ago) at Atlantic Books. To this date it’s still one of my favourite covers I’ve worked on, and so I was delighted as soon as I heard talk of her new book and eager to find out more.
The novel centers around Maya and Karim, a young couple who live in London. Maya works on a zero-hours contract for an unnamed liberal magazine and chain-smokes; Karim is trying to make it as a young film-maker. But, we also find the pages covered in footnotes which reveal the underbelly of the novel – all the inspirations and influences behind the story, from news articles, memories, films, books... The end result is a beautiful collage of fact and fiction.