An Interview with Europa's Editor-in-Chief

Book blogger Boston Bibliophile is in the midst of a two-week-long series of features on Europa Editions. As part of the series, the blog recently interviewed Europa's editor-in-chief, Michael Reynolds. We've included an excerpt below. To read the entire interview, click here. And be sure to check out the rest of the series, including interviews with Alina Bronsky and James Scudamore.

Boston Bibliophile: Europa Editions books have a very distinctive look; you can always pick them off the shelf on visuals alone. How and why did the company settle on those striking, colorful spines? What does the bird represent?

Michael Reynolds: Our books are all designed by a single designer, Emanuele Ragnisco. A lot of thought went into the original design template and it goes back to the question of brand identity. We feel we’re doing something quite distinctive, and we wanted our look to be distinctive as well; we wanted readers to be able to recognize a Europa book; we wanted those readers who have grown to appreciate our titles and our tastes to be able to identify future titles. In addition to that, we would like to think that reading a Europa book is not only a pleasure for the mind but also one for the senses. We wanted our books to be beautiful, to be pleasing to feel and hold. Now more than ever, reading a book (a real, physical book) should be a tactile experience as well as an intellectual exercise. These are the factors we consider when designing our books.

When Sandro and Sandra Ferri, the founders of Europa Editions, first began publishing in Italy they began with literature from Eastern Europe. At that time, there was very little of this literature being published in Italy and they considered that to be a great shame given the wealth of literary talent in that part of the world. They were the first to publish many of the century’s great Eastern European writers in Italian.

The bird on the spines of Europa Editions books is a stork. The same bird, two of them, adorn the spines of Edizioni EO titles. The stork’s migratory pattern in Europe is from east to west and then south. This mapped on to what they were doing with writers from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Russia, etc. Bringing them first west and then south, to Rome, where Edizioni EO has its offices.

Click here to read the entire interview.