Zora Neale Hurston

Their Eyes Were Watching God

£49.95

Illustrated By Diana Ejaita

Introduced By Zadie Smith

One of the defining African-American novels of the 20th century, Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God is beautifully illustrated by Diana Ejaita in this striking Folio Society edition.

£49.95

Book Details

Presentation Box & BindingBound in printed and blocked paper
Printed slipcase

Dimensions8¾ inches x 5½ inches

FontSet in Garamond with Nidex display

Pages232 pages

AuthorZora Neale Hurston

Illustrated ByDiana Ejaita

IllustrationFrontispiece and 6 full-colour illustrations

Publication Date13/09/2022

Editor's Notes

Janie Mae Crawford’s been gone a long while, so tongues start wagging when she casually strolls back into town one evening. Her third husband is nowhere to be seen, but there’s more to Janie than first appearances imply. When her kissin-friend Phoeby arrives with a rice supper and a shoulder to cry on, Janie finds the strength to recount her journey. Set in rural Florida in the early 1900s, Hurston’s novel was heavily critiqued upon publication and went out of print for 30 years. Rediscovered and championed by Alice Walker, this beautifully written story attracted a rapt new audience when it was reissued in 1978; it went on to become one of the most celebrated African-American novels of the 20th century and is considered a modern classic. For this special collector’s edition, we commissioned illustrator Diana Ejaita to celebrate Janie’s journey of self-discovery with her bold and joyful artwork, which includes a vibrant slipcase design.

About the Illustrator

Diana Ejaita

Diana Ejaita is a Nigerian-Italian illustrator born in Cremona, northern Italy. She studied in France and Germany and now divides her time between studios in Berlin and Lagos. Her previous commissions include cover art for The New Yorker and a Google Doodle. In her work she often explores African culture, particularly textile traditions and questions of post-colonial identity. Ejaita also runs the fashion label WearYourMask, which she founded in 2014, and her designs have been exhibited at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin, the Zurich Design Biennale and venues across Germany, Senegal and Nigeria.

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About the Illustrator

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Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960) was a novelist and folklorist, a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance and one of the major American writers of the 20th-century. She spent most of her childhood in Eatonville, Florida, and studied anthropology at Howard University in Washington, DC and Barnard College in New York, where she was the sole Black student. Hurston pursued lifelong interests in African-American folklore, hoodoo and music, carrying out ethnographic research across the South of the United States and the Caribbean. She collected hundreds of folk tales, which deeply influenced her own writing, including Their Eyes Were Watching God. Alongside her writing and research, Hurston taught drama at what was then the North Carolina College for Negroes. Hurston’s writing was neglected in her lifetime and she died in poverty; her grave was unmarked until the novelist Alice Walker located it in 1972. Since then Hurston’s reputation has been reassessed and she is internationally renowned as a key figure in African-American literature.

Zadie Smith’s first novel, White Teeth (2000), was written while she was still studying English literature at King’s College, Cambridge and immediately became a major success, winning many awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. Her subsequent novels include On Beauty, NW and the Booker longlisted Swing Time; they have been widely acclaimed for their acute understanding of race, class and life in contemporary London and the United States. Smith’s essays for The New Yorker and elsewhere have been collected, most recently in the volume Feel Free. She is a professor of creative writing at New York University and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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