I bought this collection of short stories by Tibor Fischer, some years ago and must admit, purchased it solely on the basis of the title – the most blatant and yet brilliant marketing ploy I’ve ever seen. It’s a challenge, encouraging you to think: ‘well, I’ll prove to you I’m not stupid by reading it!’. The utterly mundane cover further adds to the arrogance of the title – it makes no effort to entice you in any other way. It doesn’t need to. The title does all the work.

Of course, the fact that I actually fell for this marketing ploy, and bought the book to read it, would suggest that I am indeed, in my effort to prove otherwise, very stupid. However, in my defense, it did also occur to me that if the author had come up with this title (again, perhaps I’m naive in thinking it was the author and not the marketing team at his publishers) then perhaps the content would be just a clever or original as the packaging – as I’m not sure you’d find a book cover that looks quite as deliberately dull as this.

I’ve not read enough of the book yet to offer a verdict, but will let you know in due course (check the Currently We Are Reading post, to the right, later this week.)

Chiara Priorelli, Publicity & Marketing Manager