When we saw the ARC for the Beaufort Books edition of Sherry Jones‘s The Jewel of Medina, we immediately picked up on the similarity to the cover Ballantine Books had prepared for the book before corporate superiors at Random House scrapped its publication. So when we interviewed Jones Friday afternoon, we asked about the covers, and Beaufort’s publicist confirmed that they had chosen the same basic artwork because that image had become so publicly identified with the novel during the hoopla surrounding its cancellation.
The source material for the two designs turns out to be a painting, rather more provocative in its uncropped totality, called “The Queen of the Harem” by the German painer Ferdinand Max Bredt, about whom we are ashamed to say we know nothing more than that he created other works along similarly orientalist lines, and that he was born in 1868 and died in 1921. Care to enlighten us?