Posthegemonic Comments
It's not just the front cover pictures that are of interest. The blurb on the back telling you what the publisher thinks the book is about is often very interesting too and surprising when you go on to read the actual text. Some of the authors of the blurb have either never read the book or have carefully selected which aspects of the novel they wish to emphasise to accompany their marketing strategy.
Sarah, indeed. (And hi, by the way!) Unfortunately I didn't have access to the back covers of the various editions and translations of Eva Luna. The back cover of the HarperCollins Spanish edition, however, quotes reviews from the Washington Post Book World, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune and... People. Which I thought was an interesting mix.
Meanwhile, the back-cover blurb itself ends this way: "Employing her gift for narrative, Eva Luna invents a personal reality that's determined by magic and fate." Gifts, narrative, the real, magic, fate. It's magical realism in a nutshell without actually uttering the phrase.
(I should also note that this sentence is, in the Spanish, ungrammatical: "Por medio de su don narrativo, Eva Luna inventa una realidad persona [sic] determinada por la magia y el destino.")
One thing worth noting about the cover of the Czech translation is the way that the publishers have decided to render her name. As you will have noticed (Navratilova, etc), Czech (and Slovak) women's surnames traditionally end in 'ova'. Similarly, foreign women's names also normally have this suffix added to them (Thatcherova, et cetera) when used in a Czech context. Since 'ova' is originally a form of possessive, implying that a woman belongs to her father or husband, some feminists refuse to use this form (although, as far as I remember, this is a controversial matter in Czech law - in Slovakia, which I do know about, even more so, but I won't go into the matter here). Hence, the bare 'Allende' is already a statement on the writer's feminist credentials and on the progressive attitude of the publishing house. There you go: trainspotting can be of some use!
Tim, thanks for the trainspotting... Indeed, I now see that the Czech edition featured at Allende's own site put her name as "Allendeova."
The statement you can judge a book by it's [front] cover is very true. Just not in the sense that we are used to. Instead of telling us about the story, it tells us what the publishers want to impart to the potential reader.
Marketing rears it's ugly(?) head...
Marketing, indeed. Though more generously, you might also think about it as an attempt to match product with suitable consumers. As such, marketers also reflect (as well as create) an image that consumers have of the product--in this case, Latin American literature.
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