Battle ahead for 'cigarette pack' books

Last summer, the small British publisher and design company Tank hit on the idea of producing a range of classic books packaged like cigarettes. Abridged works and short stories by Kafka and Conrad, Tolstoy and Kipling, Hemingway and Stevenson, which looked like packs of 20 cigarettes, were duly distributed through bookshops and the Design Museum.

The books, released as Tales to Take Your Breath Away at the start of the cigarette ban in pubs and restaurants last July, were well received by the design press and have made popular Christmas presents. But now the publishers are having to inhale deeply themselves as British American Tobacco (BAT) claims that one of the packs, containing Hemingway's The Snows of Kilimanjaro and The Undefeated, resembles its own Lucky Strike pack. Claiming that such an association could seriously damage the health of the brand, BAT is trying to have the works pulped.