international edition – Modern Mrs Darcy

Last month (most of) my family popped over to Germany to visit my oldest son, a history/German double major who spent the spring semester of his junior year of college studying abroad at Leuphana University of Lüneburg, near Hamburg in the northern part of the country. Every trip has its own reasons, and our primary purpose for this trip was to spend time with our kid, hanging out in his smallish town and seeing what his life was like there.

But we also wanted to experience a bit of Europe with him, so we tacked on a long weekend in Copenhagen on the front end and took day trips to Hamburg (where I hadn’t been since I visited with my parents when I was 14) and Celle (which was unfamiliar to me before this trip). We also spent a delightful not-quite-24 hours in Frankfurt before our flight home.

When I’m traveling with my family, I (really do, seriously, I promise) exercise some restraint in the book and related literary-minded browsing department. (Case in point: I didn’t drag everyone to see Goethe’s house, even though our hotel was right around the corner.) But we did wander through a whole lot of bookstores on our travels, and I enjoyed snapping pics of titles I recognized … even though their covers were not the covers I was used to and their titles were in German, Danish, or French.

I can really nerd out about things like cover design and international marketing, and thought you might also enjoy the experience of checking out these familiar U.S. titles alongside their international counterparts.

In Copenhagen we had a lovely last breakfast at Granola, an adorable little French café in Fredericksberg. Will had scoped out a nearby plant store and book shop in advance, and after brunch we popped into Thiemers Magasin, a snug and wonderfully curated little bookstore that offered an interesting range of titles in Danish and English.

I was struck by the U.K. cover of Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma, which I read last year just after we wrapped the Summer Reading Guide and loved (and still think about all the time). The British cover (left) captures what the book is about, but in a very different way than the U.S. cover (right).

At the time of our trip, I had just finished reading Lottie Hazell’s Piglet, whose U.S. cover (right) bears a beautiful oil painting of a cheeseburger by Noah Verrier; the cheeseburger gets swapped out for a tower of over-iced donuts for the U.K. edition. (Want to see something really interesting? Check out the entirely different direction they took for the Australian edition!)

I adored Louise Kennedy’s 2022 release Trespasses (featured in our Fall Book Preview that year); I’ve been thinking about it often lately because it makes a wonderful companion to one of our new 2024 Summer Reading Guide selections. The British and U.S. hardback covers are the same (pictured right); the U.S. publisher kept the same cover for the paperback, but the British paperback edition got a makeover (pictured left). Which would you be more likely to reach for?

Next stop … Lüneburg! We spent many happy hours wandering its Innenstadt (basically, the pedestrian-only city center), including several visits to the excellent bookstore Lünebuch. (Is that not the best name for a bookstore?) Cheerful and large, with an excellent selection, helpful staff, and so many enticing mugs and puzzles that I couldn’t fit in my carry-on.

Lünebuch is where I saw my first German copy of one of my favorites, Maggie O. Farrell’s This Must Be the Place. I’m not sure if that painting on the German edition captures the story (and is Claudette a redhead? I don’t think so …) but it sure is pretty. I was also struck by how physically HUGE the German edition was, which was why I didn’t buy it in Lüneburg. (But stay tuned!)

Lüneburg is also home to several used bookstores: I spied this German edition of the 2023 Summer Reading selection The Road to Roswell on an evening stroll. Similar vibes; different execution. I loved this book—and yet as someone who doesn’t reach for many alien novels, I think I’d be more likely to pick up the U.S. edition. But I don’t know, I do love the subtitle on the German edition, which translated to “a crazy road trip novel.” What do you think?

I loved checking out the international versions of books I especially loved in English, like Ask Again, Yes, from Mary Beth Keane. The German edition of this tale of the intertwined lives of two neighboring families feels completely true to the story, while being quite different from the U.S. version (right). I was also struck by the altered title, which translates to “If you asked me again today.”

It felt like books were everywhere in Europe: we were constantly moving through train station, and these stations often had book kiosks or full-fledged bookstores. (You know what browsing all these little train station kiosks made me realize I missed? MAGAZINES. We encountered so many displays of endless magazines available for purchase in Germany!)

Here’s something I wondered about: I spied so many U.S. bestsellers available in translation in Europe, like this German edition of The Soulmate Equation snapped at the Lüneburg train station. Frequently, the title would appear in English, but every other word on the cover and in the book would be in German (or Danish, French, etc.) Why? (Serious question!)

I also enjoyed browsing the thousands of German books that I knew would never be translated into English, simply because only 3% or so of books in the U.S. are sold in translation. I may not be able to read them (unless I seriously brush up on my German), but I enjoyed looking.

Simply because of the way our day unfolded, we spent the most time at Frankfurt’s excellent and enormous bookstore Hugendubel. We were there the last night of our trip, so we exercised less restraint with our purchases (ahem) than we had up to this point.

We were grabbed right when we walked in by the impressive selection of staff picks. (Above left, plus more are pictured later in this post.)

Once again, my eye was drawn to books I read and loved in English: how would publishers choose to present the title to German readers? You can see one answer above, with the German edition of Elizabeth Strout’s book Lucy by the Sea; the German title transliterates to simply “By the sea.”

I loved this British cover of Romantic Comedy. Does the British edition capture the story? Well, maybe not. But I would pick up this book in a heartbeat!

I was struck by the small but significant differences between the U.K. cover (left) and the U.S. cover (right) of Percival Everett’s James.

And the French paperback of last year’s Minimalist Summer Reading Guide pick The Postcard, which I loved and adored and almost bought in the original French, even though I can’t read it.

Finally, after gazing longingly at the German edition of This Must Be the Place in four different German cities, Will decided I NEEDED a copy. I still didn’t want to add a nearly 600-page book to my suitcase … so he added it to his. Bless him.

Finally, I didn’t spy this book on my travels; it doesn’t publish in the U.S. until June 18, 2024. But I laughed out loud when I saw the U.K. cover (below right) for one of my certain best books of the year, Catherine Newman’s Sandwich. This is the very first book I added to the 2024 Minimalist Summer Reading Guide: I love it so.

The U.K. cover CRACKS ME UP. I would reach for that in a bookstore, would you? But I will say, the U.S. cover (left) is completely gorgeous, and (in my opinion) far better captures the tone of this wistful novel. Is it also a little zany, per the bikini cover? Sure is, but the pervasive mood is more the softly lit Adirondack vibe of my U.S. version. At least I think so. How about you?

I hope you enjoyed this vicarious little trip to the bookstores of Europe. I would love to hear your thoughts, musings, and inclinations in comments: which covers do you prefer? How do the different covers influence your perception of the book itself? Why do European publishers often keep the English title? We’d love to hear all about it.