Electric Literature is pleased to reveal the cover of Intemperance by Sonora Jha, which will be published by HarperVia on October 14th 2025. You can pre-order your copy here.
In this follow-up to the critically-acclaimed The Laughter—winner of the Washington State Book Award—a middle-aged woman starts a firestorm when she holds a contest, based on an ancient Indian ritual, in which men must compete to win her affections.
A woman who has left two husbands announces she will celebrate her 55th birthday by holding a swayamvar. Drawn from an ancient custom in her Indian culture, this is an event in which suitors line up to compete in a feat of wills and strength to win a beautiful princess’s hand in marriage. The woman, a renowned and respected intellectual in an American town who had once declared she was “past such petty matters as love,” knows she is now setting herself up for widespread societal ridicule, but her self-esteem and sexual libido are off the charts even as her body withers from disability, fading beauty, and her appetite for cake.
To her surprise, a cast of characters shows up to support her call—a wedding planner looking for the next enchanting thing, a disability rights activist making a documentary film, and even, begrudgingly, her own young adult son. The Men’s Rights Movement protests her project, angry at her objectification of men. She is waylaid by visitations from goddesses and princesses past, who either try to slap sense into her or cheer her on. She must also reckon with a brutal love story in her ancestry that was endangered by the caste system—a story that placed a generational curse on those in the family who show an intemperance of spirit. As her whole plan spirals into a spectacle, the woman embarks on a journey to decide what feat her suitor must perform to be worthy of her wrinkling hand. What feat will define a newer, better masculinity? What feat will it take for her to trust in the tenderness of love?
Intemperance is at once a satirical feminist folktale and a meditation on how we might reach past all sense and still find love.
Here is the cover, designed by Sarah Kellogg, with art by Hilma af Klint.
Author Sonora Jha: “I was delighted to receive four stunning cover options from my editor at Harper Via, Rakesh Satyal. I have worked with him and the design team at Harper Via for my previous novel, The Laughter, so I knew they would send me beauty, but four works of beauty? Agony. I narrowed it down to two images, both of which had swans, which immediately captivated me. Intemperance has multiple appearances of swans in the narrative—shape-shifting swans, angry swans, mythological swans, and even a flirty swan. It was hard to pick between the two final images, but I found myself returning to stare at this one, over and over. Ultimately, I asked myself, ‘Which one will you regret letting go?’ And this was the one. Every time I look at it, I fall more in love.
In the meeting of the swans, I see union and a separateness of identity. Here we have both intemperance and temperance. Darkness and light. One of the things the novel explores is the protagonist’s need for silence and solitude, and this cover speaks to the silence of a soaring bird yet also the muted, meditative flutter of its wings. The story is one of courtship and love, and of course, there’s the kiss of the swans at the beak, but I can’t tell you what the almost imperceptible touching of the tips of their wings does to me.
I hope to see the original painting by Hilma Af Klint someday. I feel incredibly fortunate to have on my book cover the work of this radical Swedish artist from more than a century ago. The candy-like colors and crayon-like scrawl of the letters overlay a contemporary irreverence and whimsy atop the timelessness of Af Klint’s painting. A part of the story in Intemperance is set in the same years as Hilma was painting these works of hers (although on different continents), and this gives me goosebumps. Swanbumps.”
Designer Sarah Kellogg: “As I was researching imagery for the cover of Intemperance, I struck gold when I came across a painting by the artist Hilma af Klint. The painting features two swans stretching their necks toward one another as if in defiance or fearlessness, or perhaps as an act of love. The separate worlds of the two swans meet in the middle, and their wings are outstretched with no lack of restraint for what lies ahead. The hand-drawn lettering on top of the artwork provides a more modern element to hint at the story’s setting in present-day Seattle. The crayon-like texture plays into the messy process of coming into oneself, regardless of outside opinions.”
