Okay, are you ready?
Close your eyes and think about the colour red, properly, no cheating, trust me on this one. What do you think of? Now close your eyes and think about blue – I said, no cheating. Do you think of the sky, the sea? What does yellow smell like? How does orange feel? What about black?
Okay, now keep your eyes closed, but open The Black Book of Colours; let your fingers travel over each page and your mind conjure the colours.
One day Menena Cottin asked herself “How would life be if I could not see?”, and this book is the product of that question. What would colour be like if you were blind? If you could not see green, what would green mean to you? To Thomas, who is blind, “green tastes like lemon ice cream and smells like grass that has just been cut”. To convey Thomas’s ideas to the reader Menena Cottin worked together with Rosansa Faria and created a book about colours using only black and white. Creeping out of each page are glossy black details crying out to be touched. Thomas describes each colour as he encounters it without sight: I particularly like the page on black which Thomas says is “the king of all colours”. In that case: Long live the king.