Of all the covers, you surely will, at least, know the one belonging to the first swedish edition that JAL published in 2004, the one that shows a naked Eli sleeping in what is surely the bathtub of blood, and it is even the image shown in the English Wikipedia article about the novel.
Unsurprisingly, the success of JAL's novel led many publishers around the world to make thousands of editions of the book over the years, which obviously means that there are quite varied LTROI covers
Although many editions of the book simply used the posters of the 2008 and 2010 adaptations as their cover in a typical marketing move, there are others that use as covers completely original illustrations and photographs made to give the casual reader a general idea or clue about the story and the events those pages contain. Obviously, I am not going to talk about all of them, but I will talk in detail about one in particular that, even today, continues to fascinate me due to its beauty and the magnificent poetry it probably represents.
First of all, the cover I'm referring to is this:
As you can clearly see (except if you are a caretaker of vampires with a can of acid in hand who have just been caught), this cover shows us a naked girl sleeping on the rocks of what appears to be a peaceful mountainous landscape. Beautiful, right?
Before explaining my analysis of what this cover probably represents, I will make two things clear. First, this cover seems to belong to an English edition of the book made by the publisher "Text Publishing". Secondly, I am aware that the photo that forms the cover was probably not even intended to represent LTROI at the time of taking it. After all, it is nothing new that a book edition can have a cover previously made for another completely unrelated work. However, even if they photographed a naked girl on some rocks for something that had nothing to do with LTROI , that does not erase the enormous symbolism that said image can possess when associating it with JAL's masterpiece.
That said, allow me to contribute my humble point of view on the meaning of this gorgeous cover. What I have been able to deduce (after reading the novel, admiring what a badass Tommy is, wishing that Tomas had gotten what he deserved, etc. for the millionth time) is that this cover represents a subtle element that, despite not being practically shown in the book, it can be said that it is still there in a certain way. That subtle element I'm talking about is Eli's dreams.
Think about it. Despite being willing to live as a vampire, Eli longs for his mortal days, when he had a normal life and could happily play with his friends as the sun lovingly caressed his skin. That said, the only thing that can comfort him in his awful present would be the peaceful dreams that he probably experiences while sleeping during the day (inside the bathtub full of blood), feeling completely free and mortal again before night falls again.
The fact that, on the photo, the girl, who we will assume is Eli, is sleeping on the rocks reinforces the possibility that the cover represents a dream. It can be assumed that Eli usually dreams that he is dozing in a beautiful, free, pure and illuminated environment, as a place like that would serve as the complete opposite of his crude reality, in which poor Eli is at that moment submerged in a disgusting bathtub full of human blood, in a gloomy and dark room and in a suffocating urbanization corrupted by the moral decadence practiced by most of the main and secundary characters, which adds more depth and tragedy to the character.
Making my interpretation clear, I would LOVE a future miniseries adaptation depicting this cover. My idea would be this: an episode starts by showing us, with relaxing music playing in the background, an human Eli lying on this beautiful rural landscape, smiling with his eyes closed as he feels the sun warm his bare skin. Suddenly, Eli opens his eyes, the music stops, and the scene quickly changes location, showing us his body now submerged in the apartment's bathtub of blood. The scene then ends as a completely covered-in-blood Eli rises from the bathub and adopts his classic stoic expression.
I hope you liked my article. Tell me, do you know anything about the origin of the cover? Do you share my vision of what it represents? Do you think it was the best and most poetic official cover that JAL's book ever had? Would you like to see this cover represented in an adaptation? Is there another cover that you would like to talk about? Feel free to comment!