The previous owner of one edition, for example, might have been Ludovico Einaudi — and it is she who left those delicate notes along the edges of the text.
The concept is this: each city edition of the Travel Book has three distinguished “star readers” — ambassadors of the Orient Express.
We invite these ambassadors to embark on a journey with our Travel Book and encourage them to leave sketches, reflections, marginalia, and personal impressions freely within its pages.
(These handwritten elements are then carefully reproduced in every copy of that edition.)
In this way, when a reader purchases the book, they receive it as though passed on “from the hands” of its previous owner.
Yet it is impossible to predict which ambassador’s copy you will receive. This preserves the spirit of collectability, variation, and the desire to possess a rare object. Before you even turn a page.
It feels as though the book was sent by an old friend.
And suddenly, you cannot wait to unwrap it and discover what lies inside.
And speaking of the past:
when you open the book, you discover a library card affixed to the spine, bearing the name of its previous owner.
Throughout the pages, here and there, you notice annotations and signatures — something circled, something underlined, a fleeting thought captured in the margin.