The Wondrous and Tragic Life of Ivan and Ivana
Page 24
“That’s what she said,” Aïssata replied halfheartedly.
“Can you imagine if she’s telling the truth,” Henri Duvignaud cried, more and more excited. “We’ll call them Ivan and Ivana and they’ll write the sequel to their story.”
Aïssata shrugged her shoulders. “Perhaps they’ll give a new version of their father’s life, very different from the one we are planning to tell.”
“Whatever,” Henri Duvignaud said. “The truth doesn’t exist. We lawyers see it every day. There’s the truth spoken by the accused, the truth spoken by the plaintiff, and the truth spoken by the witnesses, and we have to navigate and find a compromise between all their statements.”
Thereupon he took Aïssata by the arm and dragged her outside to a restaurant called The Glow Worm.
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EPILOGUE
We have come to the end of the wondrous and tragic life of Ivan and Ivana, dizygotic twins. We have done the best we can and have verified the exactitude of the facts down to the slightest detail. However, if Henri Duvignaud is telling the truth, this is merely our interpretation and one version among many. We can already hear disagreeable remarks. On the subject of Ivan: “What a ridiculous idea to have imagined a Guadeloupean becoming radicalized and a terrorist! It doesn’t make sense.”
Our answer to this is that you are mistaken. Mrs. Pandajamy, a respectable researcher working in the Caribbean for the European Union, is adamant that in the ghettos on the various islands, young men are converting en masse to Islam and leaving to fight in the Middle East.
As for Ivana, you seem to think her character is hardly convincing. You think it odd that given her beauty and her charm she was not seduced by some impenitent womanizer while she was a teenager in Dos d’ne, and that she kept deep in her heart an undying love for her brother.
But what shocks you the most is this platonic love between our two heroes. The problem is that you place too much importance on sex. Love is pureness of the heart which does not necessarily imply physical consummation. We have decided not to change a single word of our story. You can take it or leave it.
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On the Design
As book design is an integral part of the reading experience, we would like to acknowledge the work of those who shaped the form in which the story is housed.
Tessa van der Waals (Netherlands) is responsible for the cover design, cover typography, and art direction of all World Editions books. She works in the internationally renowned tradition of Dutch Design. Her bright and powerful visual aesthetic maintains a harmony between image and typography and captures the unique atmosphere of each book. She works closely with internationally celebrated photographers, artists, and letter designers. Her work has frequently been awarded prizes for Best Dutch Book Design.
The two contra-curves on the cover are formed from an enlarged, trimmed, and tilted S taken from the Fabrikat Hairline font by Hannes van Döhren. Using the yin-yang symbol as a starting point, our designer Tessa van der Waals had in mind the image of two children spooning in a womb. The colors come from a detail within the novel: the sweaters knitted for the twins in Mali: green for Ivan, and for Ivana rose.
The cover has been edited by lithographer Bert van der Horst of BFC Graphics (Netherlands).