Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence
Nick Bantock built Griffin and Sabine as a physical object first and a novel second. Readers pull real letters from real envelopes glued into the book and read handwritten postcards front and back, following an epistolary romance between Griffin Moss, a solitary postcard designer in London, and Sabine Strohem, a stamp illustrator on a Pacific island who claims to have watched Griffin draw for years. The exchange grows stranger and more intimate as each begins to doubt whether the other is real or a projection of the loneliness that started the correspondence. Bantock's artwork carries as much of the story as the text, layering symbols, maps, and postmarks that reward slow examination. The book became an unexpected bestseller in the early 1990s and spawned two sequels, and remains one of the purest examples of narrative that could only exist in printed form.
What you might want to know about Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A postcard and letter romance between a lonely London artist and a mysterious South Pacific stamp illustrator who seems to see his work as he makes it.
Friedman has spoken about the book as a formative example of design and storytelling working together, and has cited it as an early influence on his taste for objects that carry meaning through their physical form.
Not exactly. It reads as an interactive artifact where letters are pulled from envelopes, and the visual art carries as much of the story as the text does.
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence was written by Nick Bantock, published in 1991 by Chronicle Books.
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence is 48 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence takes most readers under an hour to finish.
Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.