Tristano

• Book cover
• 2014
• digital print
• 140 x 210 mm

To quote the publisher’s description, Tristano is a “love story with infinite possibilities”:

This book is unique as no other novel can claim to be: one of 109,027,350,432,000 possible variations of the same work of fiction. … The novel comprises ten chapters, and the fifteen pairs of paragraphs in each of these are shuffled anew for each published copy. No two versions are the same. … The copies of the English translation of Tristano are individually numbered, starting from 10,000 (running sequentially from the Italian and German editions).

Against the conventional-looking, centered Didone typography, the edition number – a significant feature of the work – is a prominent element on the cover. Exploiting the potentials of Peter Bilak’s History type system, which provides multiple historical variations on a common skeleton, each figure from 0 to 9 is assigned a different style of the typeface. As a result, each edition number displays a theoretically unique juxtaposition of typographic clichés.

• Project type:
• publication

• Author:
• Nanni ­Balestrini

• Commissioners:
• Andy Pressman
• Verso