I’m always fascinated by how books get interpreted differently across editions. The same story can get a wide range of covers that give very different impressions of what awaits. One especially interesting aspect of this is international book covers. There has been a lot of debate about UK versus U.S. covers, but there is a whole world of cover design out there, and each country (and publisher, and artist) has their own style.
So, I took some time diving into Goodreads listings to find interesting covers of well-known fantasy books. Some of these are classics of the genre, while others are more recent additions, and they include children’s, YA, and adult titles. These aren’t necessarily the most popular cover in this language, just one I found that looked interesting. (Side note: Indonesia has some amazing covers.) Most of the time I’ve blurred out the text, but I left a few, so if you read Russian, Arabic, or Lithuanian, you have an advantage!
Take a look at these covers and see if you can guess which book they grace the cover of! Then click the links below to check your answer. This will take you to the U.S. edition, but I’ve included which language each cover is associated with below the image, if you want to seek out that specific edition!
I tried to stick to only well-known books, so if you’re a fantasy fan, you will likely have at least heard of all of these, even if you haven’t read them. I took inspiration from the posts The Most Influential Fantasy Books of All Time and The Best Fantasy Books From the Last 10 Years, so check those out if you want to add to your TBR.
Now, on to the book covers!
How’d you do?