In this altered cover, a carved window reveals a layered collage centred on a woman playing a traditional Iranian instrument. Next to her, the small fragment of text—“She was silent.”—anchors the scene in the book’s narrative, echoing the tension between voice and voicelessness that runs through Byatt’s stories.

The layered cut forms create a shallow chamber where image, pattern, and text overlap, much like the strata of different tales. Depth and shadow give the impression that the figure is emerging from within the book itself, suspended between illustration and apparition. This quiet, constructed presence mirrors the book’s movement between the scholarly and the mythical, the ordinary and the supernatural.

By combining the stillness of the phrase with the poised gesture of the musician, the piece becomes a small theatre of storytelling—suggesting a moment just before something is spoken, played, or conjured into being.