Cover Reveal: A BRUTAL DESIGN by Zachary Solomon

We’re delighted to reveal the cover design for Zachary Solomon’s debut novel, forthcoming from Lanternfish Press on January 30, 2024.

Lanternfish Press announced the acquisition of the novel in January. Zachary Solomon was represented in the deal by Reeves Hamilton at Vertical Ink.

The cover of A Brutal Design was designed by Kimberly Glyder with art direction by Christine Neulieb.

After the fascist takeover of his homeland and the murder of his parents, Jewish architecture student Samuel Zelnik thinks that he and his friends are bound for the gulag—or worse. Instead, he receives an unexpected offer of work and freedom in the experimental utopian city of Duma.

Awed by the city’s dramatic architecture but confused by the other residents’ strange behavior, Zelnik searches for his long-lost uncle who emigrated to Duma before him. Instead, he reunites with Miriana Grannoff, an exiled avant-garde artist who was once his teacher. Her memorial installations hidden around the city equally enchant and repel him. And gradually, they begin to reveal a truth: Duma is not the workers’ paradise it pretends to be.

Zachary C. Solomon is from Miami, Florida. He received an MFA from Brooklyn College, where he was a Truman Capote fellow. He lives with his wife, the novelist Mandy Berman, and their daughter in New York’s Hudson Valley.