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See Sonali Zohra's Gorgeous Images from the New, Illustrated Ramayana

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When we read Arshia Sattar's gripping retelling of the classic Hindu epic Ramayana, we were blown away. Arshia takes an incredibly dramatic story—an army of flying monkeys, an evil demon king, a beautiful princess in distress, a hero who discovers his own secret powers—and brings it vividly to life in lucid, artful, and propulsive prose that honors the original ancient text by the Sanskrit poet Valmiki. Making the book even more vidid are artist Sonali Zohra's stunning illustrations: twenty two-page spreads in bright color, sharp detail, and astonishingly original conception. See the gallery below for a preview the images, which will be even more gorgeous in the finished, hardcover book—out March 2018 from Yonder!

Gallery: Sonali Zohra's Illustrations from Ramayana

Sonali Zohra: Artist's Statement

Growing up in India, not knowing the story of the Ramayana or at least a general outline of what it is about is unlikely. It is India’s great archetypal story, one that shows up everywhere. It is in the fabric of our culture and has been presented in a variety of styles and mediums—be it architecture, painting, illustration or sculpture—over the span of two thousand years.

The opportunity to illustrate the Ramayana, particularly this version translated and rewritten by Arshia Sattar from Valmiki’s original, was something out of a dream. As a child I was fascinated by indigenous folk artist Badri Narayan’s illustrations of the Mahabharata written by Shanta Rameshwar Rao. The illustrations portrayed the gods and goddesses in an almost human form—and, in my eyes, a more relatable form compared to the popular religious depictions of the characters. This seemed to fit Arshia’s style of writing: mystical yet so relatable. Inspired by the text, I began drafting my visions of this great story.

I wanted the illustrations to be dark and detailed silhouettes against bold colours in the hope of translating the mood and tone of Arshia’s descriptions. As an artist, the process is sometimes greater than the end goal. This process was almost meditative—it brought me closer to understanding the intricacies of the scenarios within the story and opened up a whole new way of setting the scene for the text to follow.

—Sonali Zohra

 

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Francine Prose Introduces a New Illustrated Frankenstein

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The horror, the horror….

We can all picture Frankenstein’s monster, but can we really conjure the dread and terror of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus?  A classic in its two-hundredth year of life, the masterpiece has indeed proved immortal, and is even more popular today than it was upon publication. But the popularity of the book has sometimes dimmed the horror of the original image: a man created from the salvaged anatomy of the recently buried dead.

The tempestuous tale of Frankenstein’s origins is almost as good as the resulting novel. Mary Shelley had just run away with the still-married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, and her meddling stepsister, Claire, was along for the trip. This uneasy threesome met with Lord Byron, who had become Claire’s lover, and his physician, John William Polidori, at Lac Leman in Switzerland for the summer season. Cold and heavy rains (the consequence of an Indonesian volcanic eruption the year before) put a damper on their holiday. On Byron’s suggestion, the group resorted to telling ghost stories (and one presumes other amusements), with each member of the party charged with writing his or her own chilling tale. No inspiration came to Mary—until the vision for Frankenstein appeared in a dream, one so terrifying that she knew she had to replicate the sensation in her readers. This June, two hundred years after that fateful night, we’ll be releasing a very special edition of Frankenstein, the second book in our Restless Classics line.

The acclaimed novelist and critic Francine Prose, in her introduction to our edition, makes a compelling case for the continued relevance of this towering work of gothic fiction. Prose speculates that Mary Shelley was likely influenced not only by her dream and the stormy lakeside retreat, but also by her second pregnancy:

Mary was pregnant with Shelley’s second child, doubtless a source of anxiety since her first child, Clara, had died soon after birth and Mary’s own mother had died in childbirth. Little wonder, then, that the story Mary wrote would be so thoroughly steeped in violence, in grief, in loneliness and fear, in remorse and guilt.

Now, even as medical technology brings increased security to childbirth, its advances bring back to life the old questions Mary Shelley originally tangled with: "What is a human being? Is it dangerous to play god? What are the ethical implications and limits of scientific research?"

The delusion of reason: Eko illustrates Frankenstein

In tandem with Francine Prose’s introduction, the fiercely original Mexican artist Eko brings readers back the gothic horror of Shelley’s text with 26 original illustrations throughout the book. In his illustrator’s introduction, Eko writes:

The scientist Hippolyte Cloquet described writing his groundbreaking Treatise on Descriptive Anatomy “with scalpel in hand,” .... In this series of ink drawings I use as a base the pages of a French anatomy book from the period during which Mary Shelley wrote her novel; the paper is an artistic setting, historic and aesthetic, and the information and the forms of the letters are Dr. Victor Frankenstein’s laboratory. With my drawings I continue Dr. Frankenstein’s line of thinking and ask the same questions he asks: Is it right for science to create human beings? Is that “creature,” that “monster” the consequence of human arrogance? Is being familiar with anatomy enough to know what it means to be human? Francisco de Goya writes on one of his etchings, “The sleep of reason produces monsters.” This monster is formed with human parts and comes to life with the force of electric energy—but still isn’t human. It’s the product of dreaming, of a delirious mentality. He doesn’t even exist; he is the fear that we have of our own work. My drawings, like the mind of Dr. Frankenstein, start with the delusion of reason.

A sneak peek at 10 of Eko's original illustrations 

Pre-order your copy of Restless Classics’ Frankenstein to read Francine Prose’s introduction, see all 26 of Eko’s illustrations, and reacquaint yourself with a timely 200-year-old masterpiece of gothic horror.