Snowblind

Robert Sabbag, Damien Hirst
Snowblind:  A brief Career in the Cocaine Trade 
Edinburgh, UK: Canongate, 1998
320 pp., 23 x 14.5 x 2.5 cm., hardcover
Edition of 1000 signed and numbered copies

Published by Canongate books (who have also published works by Miranda July, David Shrigley, Christian Bok, Nick Cave, etc.), this collector's edition of Sabbag's 1976 cult classic about smuggling features an elaborate and functional design by Damien Hirst. It is housed in a slip cover featuring a collage of reproduced dollar bills and bound between reinforced mirrors. A metal credit card (in the name of the protagonist Zachary Swan and in the style of an American Express card) can be used as a bookmark. Inside the book, a die-cut trench runs through the pages hiding a rolled up $100 bill. The final three digits of the note, which were specially secured from the US Treasury, correspond to the number of the edition.

The title page is also numbered and signed by the collaborators — Hirst, Howard Marks (who contributed the introduction to this edition) and Sabbag.

Available for £950.00 (which I think is close to the original publication price), here.