Reza Ghassemi’s debut novel, Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime, was first published in 1996 and went on to win several literary awards in its original Persian. Now, Deep Vellum is publishing it in English for the first time. Michelle Quay, who co-edited Routledge Handbook of Persian Literary Translation, was tasked with translating the novel from Persian.
Coming out on March 17, 2026, the book is about an Iranian exile in 1990s Paris whose live unravels into a surreal mystery. The book is now available for pre-order.
Debutiful is honored to reveal the cover, designed by Elisha Zepeda, along with a Q&A with Michelle Quay about how the American cover of this Persian classic came to be.
While writing the book, did you have any ideas for what you wanted the cover to look like?
While translating this book, I was mostly aware of things I didn’t want on the cover. As a translator working on Middle Eastern literature, I’m hyper-cognizant of not wanting to confirm lazy stereotypes, so I was hoping to avoid, for example, anything desert-y looking, women in overly-conservative dress, or, God forbid, any camels or labyrinthine harems. Luckily, the content of the novel—an Iranian immigrant in exile in 1990s Paris—was unlikely to conjure any such images.
There are two covers for the original Persian novel, both of which touch on important themes in the narrative. The first is an image of a city but with colors reversed—dark blue sky, white buildings. The effect is as if it is the negative of a photograph, and gives us the feeling of ‘city turned upside down’, or even ‘life having departed from its normal sequence of events.’ All incredibly appropriate for this novel exploring the great psychological rupture of immigration. The city’s importance as a character in the novel—especially the sixth floor of the apartment building where much of the action occurs—was a direction I had wondered about for the cover, but ultimately never proposed to the design team.
The other cover of the Persian novel is an abstract painting of an orchestra performing. It taps into the themes prompted by the title—Woodwind Harmony in the Nighttime—which is meant to be an ironic reference to the fact that loud brass instruments in the wind section could never really be gentle enough to play a nocturne (a nocturne being the nighttime harmony normally reserved for strings and piano). In particular, the especially bold red that was chosen for this cover somehow fits the novel’s jaunty prose and off-kilter narrator. The significance of the title gradually reveals itself over the course of the novel, so I won’t spoil it here.
Again, more on the question of what not to put on the cover, I knew I was not particularly appreciative of the cover chosen for the French translation, which features a slightly romantic and cozy-looking rustic attic, replete with plants, sunshine and even a watering can. All of this bore almost no relation to the narrator’s cramped attic apartment (the site of many a deranged nighttime hallucination), which our narrator imagines being infested by mad pigeons at one point, and at another, he sees his window whipped clean off by the wind in the storm, slicing through the air like a hazardous razorblade. No, very little romantic attachment to his apartment is to be found here.
Can you explain what the design process was like once you started working with your publishing team?
The publishing team was so sensitive and clever in their approach. They kindly solicited my opinions on ‘what not to put on the cover’ very early on, and although they were unlikely to favor the lazy stereotypes I feared, their asking put my mind at ease, nonetheless. Once they sent the initial designs, I felt truly overwhelmed by the difficulty of choosing, only because they were all such fantastic designs in their own way. There is one wonderful group of caped skeletons in particular that I am sad readers will not have a chance to admire.
However, when I saw the initial design for the final cover we chose, it struck a chord immediately as the right vibe and tone for the novel. After some minor adjustments in the cover’s colors & discussion of various possibilities, we were in agreement.
What was it like seeing your finalized cover for the first time?
Such a delight—honestly it is a dream to have such a talented designer providing you with so many options, and at the same time, somehow able to intuit which ones will work the best for everyone. I have done some very minor and incredibly not-professional graphic design for my job, which gave me such a huge appreciation for the work of the artist and also the guidance of the publicity team. What a joy to end up with a cover that is both eye-catching and honest in its reflections of the novel’s themes.
How does the cover work to convey what the contents of the story are?
Speaking of those themes, what struck me about this cover design right away was how it captures the novel’s narrative tone – wry, self-reflexive, and self-conscious when facing the judgement of a supernatural creature. It instantly conveys the thread of irony, humor, and oddness that runs throughout the book—for me, the feeling of a dog cocking his head at his master in curious bafflement. I appreciate the small details present on the cover, like our narrator’s shadow. The Shadow becomes a significant character in the novel in its own right, and a kind of alter ego for the narrator. So it was fun to see that referenced already on the cover. It’s hard to describe how you know that the vibe is right, but you somehow just feel that it fits!