How have these blue and white paperbacks become the ultimate accessory for the intellectually inclined?
The Fitzcarraldo Editions pop-up in Mayfair feels more like a gallery than a bookshop. Tables are lined with identical paperbacks; minimalist blue or white matte covers with serif text.
Visitors move quietly through the displays, picking up the books as carefully as you would with a valuable work of art. One customer snaps a photo of the shelves before paying and slips a copy of Perfection into her new Fitzcarraldo-branded tote bag.
Over the past decade, Fitzcarraldo has grown from a quiet indie press into a cultural symbol of literary prestige.
Like the Criterion Collection for film, it has come to represent a certain kind of intellectual seriousness, attracting an eclectic group of followers who are just as invested in what’s within the books as they are in what it means to be seen with one.
Founded in 2014 by Jacques Testard, Fitzcarraldo Editions began as an independent literary press with a focus on long-form essays, experimental fiction, and translated contemporary literature.
Testard attributes his success to scouting out successful foreign-language books that had yet to gain acclaim in the English and American book markets.
“The stroke of luck I’ve had is that anglophone publishing is risk-averse and tends to look inwards,” Testard said in an interview with The Times.
This method earned his publishing company its first Nobel Prize in 2014, for Svetlana Alexievich’s Second-hand Time, which was already a bestseller in Russia. Fast forward to 2025, and Fitzcarraldo has amassed several Nobel Prize-winning authors, including Olga Tokarczuk, Annie Erneaux, and Jon Fosse.
Jacques Testard’s careful curation of literary work has helped Fitzcarraldo cultivate a reputation for quality. “People trust them because they make the right decisions about what they publish,” said Ronnie Stowell, Senior Bookseller at Waterstones.
“They publish quirky books about topics that you may not have even heard about.” Testard’s readiness to take risks in ways that other publishers do not has allowed them to stand out to readers seeking that risk.
The books published by Fitzcarraldo are certainly not your typical leisurely summer read. “The Fitzcarraldo customer is a seasoned reader, someone who has been to university and is interested in modern classics,” Ronnie told me.
Some of their titles are so experimental that they could be considered abstract, such as Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries, a collection of sentences from personal journals arranged in alphabetical order to reveal an obscured, fragmented narrative.
“Fitzcarraldo knows that everyone judges books by their covers, so they’ve gone down a route of making a name for themselves and reducing any prejudgement”
Ronnie Stowell, Senior Bookseller at Waterstones
While the publisher’s literary prestige has helped earn their books places on shortlists, Fitzcarraldo’s carefully considered visual identity is what earned them a place in the tote bags of the proudest self-confessed cool readers.
“Fitzcarraldo knows that everyone judges books by their covers, so they’ve gone down a route of making a name for themselves and reducing any prejudgment,” Ronnie told me.
Besides the title and author, all of their releases are identical. Their fiction works have International Klein Blue paperback covers, with white, capitalised serif lettering.
Non-fiction releases are reversed, with chalky white covers and deep blue text. The custom font, designed by Ray O’Meara and aptly named ‘Fitzcarraldo’, gives the books an elegant unity that is both modest and unmistakable.
Ronnie added that their design choices could be disadvantageous in some ways, as they are excluding a large audience of people who rely on covers to determine whether they’d enjoy a certain book.
Yet this restraint is what gives Fitzcarraldo its edge. The design is a filter, maintaining the press’s exclusivity by inviting only those curious enough to pick one up despite the absence of visual cues.
Their uniformity also makes them easily recognisable on bookshelves, and almost invites a mentality of collection, like Pokémon cards for the East London creative.
Some bookstores even display Fitzcarraldos together, isolated from the rest of their stock, and the publisher offers annual subscriptions to deliver every new release to their biggest fans to ensure their collections stay up to date.
The urge to collect seems to be irresistible amongst fans. Julian, an innovation planner at TFL in his mid-20s, bought his first Fitzcarraldo book after seeing the blue and white covers circulating on social media.
A year later, his collection has grown to fifteen titles, a mix of both fiction and non-fiction. “I keep them all grouped up on my shelf like a little family,” he told me. Julian follows Fitzcarraldo Editions on Instagram, where he has been able to keep up to date with releases and events such as the pop-up and their recent summer party.
“It’s a nice ethos to let the text speak for itself in a world of BookTok saturation”
Julian, Fitzcarraldo reader
Laura, a 24-year-old student, purchased her first Fitzcarraldo book at a museum bookshop: Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton. “I picked it up because it looked really nice, it felt very sleek and clean with the white cover and blue lettering,” she told me.
“Though I didn’t really enjoy reading it as much,” she added. Despite feeling “misled” by the book itself, Laura described how its risqué topic piqued her interest, leading her to acquire several more. “I’m way more inclined to read a Fitzcarraldo; I expect a certain calibre of book from them now that I have this association. I trust their taste.”
For readers like Laura, Fitzcarraldo represents a kind of literary maturity. “I’m over a crowded book cover,” Laura explained. “A lot of mainstream publishing has felt a bit juvenile to me, whereas Fitzcarraldos make me feel like an adult reading a book.”
The current trend in publishing design is the use of colourful text and youthful illustrations, seen on books such as Ali Hazelwood’s bestselling The Love Hypothesis. Fitzcarraldo Editions has purposefully diverted from publishing trends as a way to stand out and establish itself as a more intellectual reading option.
Designer Ray O’Meara told The Times, “We wanted something that cut across the tendency in British publishing to literally illustrate the content of a book on the cover.”
Testard has also attributed both Fitzcarraldo’s brand philosophy and design to classical European publications like Adelphi Editions and Éditions Gallimard.
Although each release is a work of art in its own right, it is also part of a larger “constellation”, and this is reflected in the uniform covers. “It’s a nice ethos to let the text speak for itself in a world of BookTok saturation,” Julian told me.
Their timeless approach also signals that their books are designed to challenge rather than entertain. “You wouldn’t even assume that a fictional book would come in that kind of packaging,” Laura added, comparing the design to academic journals.
“It fits well with the kind of person I want to display to others. I’m not just someone who reads books, I’m a person who reads this kind of book.”
Laura, a Fitzcarraldo reader
Fitzcarraldo Editions exists in a cultural moment where high-brow books have become extremely fashionable as markers of intellectual seriousness, whether that’s literally, as seen by Jonathan Anderson’s book tote launch for Dior, or subtly, with celebrities like Bella Hadid being conveniently papped embracing a hefty Stephen King novel.
Reading literary fiction is a status and cultural signifier, suggesting that you engage deeply with challenging work, instead of opting for mainstream titles, and are immune to the temptation of modern digital alternatives like doomscrolling.
Some fans are acutely aware of this and don’t shy away from the performative nature of reading Fitzcarraldo books in public. “It fits well with the kind of person I want to display to others,” Laura admitted. “I’m not just someone who reads books, I’m a person who reads this kind of book.”
Reading a Fitzcarraldo title is a subtle performance of intellectual endurance. By holding one in public, you are telling the world that you are capable of handling difficulty and that you value rigour over ease.
These are books that resist skimming and demand patience and attention. “It’s not your typical mass market fiction,” Ronnie told me. In a culture saturated with short-form content, this challenge becomes part of their allure.
At the Mayfair pop-up, the publisher’s intellectual branding takes full form. The books are laid out in careful symmetry on simple wooden tables. The till also serves as a coffee shop, equipping lingering customers with an obligatory oat flat white.
A small table at the back offers Fitzcarraldo-branded stickers, postcards, and tote bags (an extension of the books’ visual identity). There’s even an opportunity to leaf through a highly coveted collector’s edition of Olga Tokarczuk’s The Books of Jacob, which retails at just shy of £100.
In an age of novelty and noise, Fitzcarraldo has turned intellectual aspiration into a marketable aesthetic identity. Owning one means something, but stacking fifteen means even more.
Featured image by Dani Port