Dominic West will narrate Bond book

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British actor Dominic West will be the narrator of the audiobook edition of Solo, the new James Bond novel by William Boyd.

Publisher Jonathan Cape also revealed the official cover of the novel on Thursday. The cover, designed by Random House creative director Suzanne Dean, features a retro-inspired die-cut design including, among other things, bullet holes. A version of the cover will also be featured on the audiobook edition, read by Dominic West. West is perhaps best-known for his roles in the HBO series The Wire, BBC Two series The Hour and, most recently, BBC4’s biopic Burton And Taylor, where he played the title role of Richard Burton opposite Helena Bonham Carter.
Says Richard Cable, managing director of Vintage Publishing, “We are thrilled to have such a distinguished actor as Dominic West reading Solo. It’s the perfect combination of reader and text. Audio listeners are in for a real treat!” Dean took her inspiration from the 1960s setting of the book and design heroes including Saul Bass, who was also the inspiration for Random House’s Vintage Classics Ian Fleming series. In true James Bond style, the primary colours and bullet holes of the dust jacket hint at danger, adventure and espionage, while removing the outer dust jacket playfully reveals a red hardcover printed with bullet burns and a gecko, a reference to James Bond’s African mission in the book.
Dean, whose other work includes the covers of Ian McEwan’s Atonement and Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, says, “A new Bond cover needs to do a lot of things at once. It needs to appeal to literary and commercial audiences, both fans of the original 14 Fleming books and film fans. It needs to reflect both the content of the novel and capture the reader’s imagination. “William Boyd has chosen to set Solo in 1969, and achieving this period feel was one of my core aims when designing the cover, whilst also ensuring that the book retained a fresh and contemporary lay-out. I didn’t want just to depict a cinematic image, but rather to try and reflect the essence of Ian Flem-ing’s original novels.”