Peter Wells: Missionary position

The Hungry Heart by Peter Wells. Photo / Supplied

Julian Barnes had this to say as he slipped $120,000 into his pocket for winning this year's Booker Man Prize. "... if the physical book, as we've come to call it, is to resist the challenge of the ebook, it has to look like something worth buying, worth keeping".

The fact is the physical book is under increasing threat. The ebook is light and poses as a fashionable alternative to the death of trees. The book has to be special to survive.

As a reader, I have so many intense memories of the content of a book fixed by its look, the feel of the pages, the illustrations within. They seem melded together to the degree that the act of reading is indivisible from the book read. (Like my memory of Wind in The Willows. I loved the vivid green hardback cover, the intricate map inside the endpapers and those lovely line drawings of toads and moles all dolled up as if they've just stepped out the front door of Downton Abbey.)

You imagine books in your head as you read. This is the beauty of them. But a book as an object should suggest some of the pictures, hint at them, nudge you towards a possibility.

Possibility is what it is all about. Then there's another thing. Allegedly, a decision to purchase a book happens within the first three minutes. The book cover, in a field of book covers, plays an important part in signalling an initial attraction.

In the past, I have worked with contemporary artists such as photographers Fiona Pardington and Deborah Smith and artist Martin Poppelwell to create book covers. The interplay between the artist and the content of the book is key. But so is the element of trust. Over the years, you build up a name. There's also something simpatico about the relationship between the different art forms speaking to each other: word and image deal in ideas and concepts, it's just the medium they are translated through which is different.

My experience with my new book The Hungry Heart: Journeys with William Colenso came about by happenstance. I wanted to step outside the usual tasteful historical cover, using an older image. My book is a contemporary take on history with a personal theme running through it. The journeys in the title refer as much to my own changing perspective on Colenso and who and what he was - a deranged missionary, a crazed ego maniac, a man given to sexual restraint and sexual excess - or a curiously insightful individual who saw Maori and Pakeha relations from a unique angle. (Maybe he was all of these things, which only makes him more interesting.)

I needed a cover to message the newness of the take. The Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery had taken the bold step of commissioning Gavin Hurley to produce a new portrait of Colenso, one of the founders of the institution. Hurley's work stands out for his historical engagement. How many younger artists choose George Grey as a subject and make it new? His paintings and collages are winsome poems; they look back with eloquence. They seem enigmatic, cartoon-like and child-profound all at the same time.

I saw an early collage Hurley did for the museum project and fell in love with it. (You can fall in love with a painting, an image, a book.) I asked the museum if there was any way I could use this early draft. Very kindly they agreed, keeping the main option open for their one iconographic image of Colenso which was recently unveiled by the Minister of the Arts.

Hurley understood, empathised and said he would do another for the book cover. I said no - then we had to get it past the publishers. This is an interesting and rather narrow gate. As the owner of the contents of your book you have, at best, a tangential relationship to its presentation. Most writers have no say at all.

Fortunately, my good relationship with Random House publisher Harriet Allen led her to shepherd the new cover image through.

I also wanted another element. In 1843, a fellow missionary, William Cotton, kept a beautiful diary embellished with drawings. One was of Maori kowhaiwhai patterns. These elements were handed over to Alan Deare of Area Design who did a magnificent job, I think, of coolly combining the elements, keeping the restraint but extending the colour range. The spine of the book he changed into a subtle black.

So there it is: an object of beauty in itself. I think the cover tells the story of the contents well. It's fresh, contemporary and the glistening Maori pattern of the spine hints at the intensely bicultural universe Colenso inhabited in his mind and body. At the moment I have it on my desk and I love looking at it. Authors do fall in love ... with the covers of their books.

* The Hungry Heart: Journeys With William Colenso (Vintage $49.99) is out now.