White Book / Black Book / Gray Book

April 13, 2012 10:50 PM

White Version / Black Version: I read a book in the early 1990s that I picked up at a foreign bookstore in Japan...

I don't recall it being written in Engrish, so I think it was a normal Anglophone novel, but I'm not sure which English-speaking country the author might have been from.

Anyway, IIRC, the book was sold in two editions: a black-cover version and a white-cover version, and I only read one of them. For some reason, I believe the other-color-cover version tells the same story from a different viewpoint, but I don't believe I read the other book, and I literally remember nothing about the story other than the two-book presentation.

Do you remember this/these book[s]? Or is this just a dream fragment, like that class I took in college, but forgot I had signed up for, and didn't realize it until after the drop date?

posted by spacewrench to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Was this Good Omens? I'm pretty sure that book came in black and white...
posted by Strass at 11:04 PM on April 13, 2012

Best answer: Maybe Caris Davis's Stealth, which came in a White Edition and Black Edition?
posted by jonathanbell at 4:32 AM on April 14, 2012

Response by poster: That's it, thanks! Strange that I can't remember a thing about it, beyond the two editions (and, now that you've identified it, the author's unusual name). I do remember not being impressed enough to want to read the other version, but now I'm curious: what was it about?

I guess I'll have to check the library to find out...
posted by spacewrench at 9:33 AM on April 14, 2012

I genuinely can't remember. I think I only have one edition (White or Black? Not sure). I found it in a second hand shop and liked the cover (the Blackbird...). It was published by Penguin Original, which was a short lived first edition paperback imprint.
posted by jonathanbell at 3:43 PM on April 14, 2012