From the hit series The Last of Us and cultivating oyster mushrooms in your own kitchen to the publication of books such as The Mushroom at the End of the World (Princeton University Press, 2021) and The Future is Fungi (Thames & Hudson, 2022): clearly a broad interest is developing in fungi and their networks. Let’s Become Fungal! is part of this phenomenon, but shifts the focus from ‘western science’ to native wisdom and art, making an urgent contribution of great relevance and integrity.
Grey paper has been chosen for the text sections, and transparent paper for the illustrations. These illustrations therefore shine through from the other side of the page, but never overlap, which – in combination with the scintillating colours – produces lively picture sections. In addition, the book block and cover are made from lightweight paper, resulting in a very limp book. As a grey, disorderly, floppy object, this book well suits the theme of nature and fungi.
The typographical pages on the other hand are required to do a lot of heavy lifting: the margins are narrow and the notes are placed at right-angles to the body text. Generally speaking, this just about manages – thanks to the breaking up of the text by quotes, graphic elements and the abovementioned illustrations – not to result in intimidating pages, although sadly not in every instance.
This book has a character all of its own; the only real comparison would be with an associative idea of old books of magic spells and medicinal flowers. As the jury, we were delighted to note that the experimental presentation serves the content of the book – we should really say at this stage, that we now expect nothing less from publisher Valiz.