Summary The present study examines two book covers to discover how their telling images and condensed tales of war are related to the books’ interior content. We scrutinize A’zam Hosseini’s Da (2008) and its English translation by Paul Sprachman, One Woman’s War: Da (Mother) (2014). Since Da has been standing in Iranian best sellers list for a decade, it is considered as a paragon of popular national literature. Given the proclivity of books’ designers to exploit marketing strategies on the covers, the study reflects on how they harness the power of those strategies for the greatest ideological gain. We demonstrate how designers utilise paratextual elements as external and commercial mediators of the inside text, thereby conjuring up founding myths of individual and national Iranian identity. It is concluded, against the famous old saying, that a book is designed to be judged by its cover.

中文翻译：

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从封面判断一本书：伊朗战争文学封面上的宗教文化神话

小结 本研究检查了两本书的封面，以发现它们讲述的图像和浓缩的战争故事如何与书籍的内部内容相关。我们仔细研究了 A'zam Hosseini 的 Da (2008) 和 Paul Sprachman 的英文翻译，One Woman's War: Da (Mother) (2014)。由于达十年来一直在伊朗畅销书排行榜上名列前茅，它被认为是流行民族文学的典范。鉴于书籍设计师倾向于在封面上利用营销策略，该研究反映了他们如何利用这些策略的力量来获得最大的意识形态收益。我们展示了设计师如何利用副文本元素作为内部文本的外部和商业中介，从而唤起个人和国家伊朗身份的创始神话。结论是，反对那句著名的老话，