Exclusive Cover Reveal of “A Cow Gives Birth at Night” by Pajtim Statovci, Translated by David Hackston

Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of A Cow Gives Birth at Night by Pajtim Statovci, translated by David Hackston, which will be published on January 26, 2027 by Pantheon Books. You can pre-order your copy here.

From the celebrated author of Crossing, a finalist for the National Book Award, a piercing, candid novel about a man haunted by the violence of his past and a family ruptured by the war that ravaged their homeland, for readers of Douglas Stuart, Jenny Erpenbeck, Ocean Vuong, and Garth Greenwell.

1996: A boy raised in Finland spends the summer at his grandfather’s house in Kosovo, a time that will mark him for the rest of his life, isolating him from his family and ensconcing him in a life of the mind, the complex escape of imagination.

Decades later, having grown into adulthood and built a career as a celebrated author, he travels with his mother again to Kosovo, a country that has since been savaged by war, where fear still guides people’s everyday lives. The journey forces him to delve into a past both real and imagined, into a mire of trauma and illness. Can memories be trusted? What can be forgiven? And what demands revenge? His questions spiral through his every interaction—with his relatives, with a family in need, with a seemingly duplicitous community leader—until he’s confronted with the ultimate, the most suffocating question of all: What will it take to survive history?

Staggering in both its psychological acuity and tour-de-force prose, A Cow Gives Birth at Night shows us what it is to live a life without safety, to be drawn towards danger, and the haunting truths of what can happen in a family after the lights have been turned off.

Here’s the cover, designed by Linda Huang and Emily Mahon:

Linda Huang and Emily Mahon: The author wanted the cover to reflect the restlessness and claustrophobia of the novel. We felt like there needed to be something human and vulnerable, and the hand in red almost swallowing the calf spoke to his desire for an unexpected and “fleshy” element. The type is set in a simple serif, with the title and author on opposite corners, which nicely reinforces the angle of the hand. A black sky with specks of gold cascades down the top left—a specific request from the author. To us, the painterly cow in the red palm is such a tender, striking image, almost womb-like, evoking the “birth” in the title.

Pajtim Statovci: Sometimes I get asked whether my books have a particular look in my mind, whether there’s a figure, an image, or at least a color present for me while I’m writing. The answer is—a rather unsatisfying—yes and no. 

I draw a lot of inspiration from the work of other artists, from fellow writers to theater professionals and architects, so my artistic space is filled with different voices and visions. I have felt especially grateful and humbled when I have been lucky enough to have my work staged, turned into an adaptation. To be able to provide other artists with something that they have offered me is one of the greatest gifts I’ve received as an author.

There are, of course, the adaptations that are not spoken of enough. Cover artists and graphic designers have an almost impossible task at hand: to create a cover, from scratch, that is supposed to do all of, but not only, the following:

1. capture the essence, the spirit, of a massive amount of text, however abstract it may be;
2. support the story and everything it has to say, however impalpable it may be, through typography, color palette, composition, concept, etc.;
3. meet the possible hopes and needs of the publisher, author, booksellers, reviewers and also readers, however varying those may be;
4. create something distinctive, unique, never-before-seen, surprising, no matter how impossible that may be.

Easy, right?

In my eyes, the color of the world in my novel A Cow Gives Birth at Night is dark green, dark blue, and silvery. It is early in the morning, and somewhere in the distance there’s a cow, living its lonely life, always on the outside, escaping our sight. Yet, she is dependent on the care of a fellow animal, someone as sensitive as she is, a child who is able to see himself as her equal. There are no stars, no sun, no mercy here, and nothing leading to safety. 

When I first saw the US cover of my novel A Cow Gives Birth at Night, a breathtakingly striking, gorgeous design that the magnificent Emily Mahon—one of the most gifted designers I know and have had the privilege to continue working with—created in collaboration with Pantheon’s incredible art director, Linda Huang, I immediately thought: That’s it, that’s my book, all of it, and it’s everything and more, from every direction.

 So much better than in my imagination.