Cavesa wrote:tldr version: the nationality on the cover is risky, the original language should be there automatically.
Exactly. I immediately thought of Kundera as well. Another prominent example here would be Joseph Conrad. Based on his birthplace (Berdyczów / Бердичів), I do wonder about the flag, which belongs on the Chinese cover: Imperial Russian? Polish? Ukrainian? British? Maybe all four?
There is a larger issue at play here, 19th/20th century nationalism conditioned us to think of successful people as objects that can be claimed (and fetishized) by one "team" or another.
Marie Curie is written as Maria Skłodowska-Curie in Polish, and not uncommonly as Maria Curie-Skłodowska. When speaking, sometimes just Maria Skłodowska (emphasizing her maiden name, as the dominant one, something completely out of the ordinary). It's obvious what's going on. We want to claim her... presumably
"lest some imbecile is duped into thinking "our" Maria is French!" Of course it doesn't matter one bit that she
was French, studied in Paris, and spent most of her adult life (and therefore, her career) in France.
Is she French? Is she Polish? More importantly, does it matter?
If we were to determine that Curie is indeed
more Polish than French (whatever that means), or Kundera
more French than Czech... should that make me feel proud, or smart, or more worthy? Does it make the French nation more rich in culture but less in science, to
win Kundera but
lose Curie? The whole thing is absurd. We can't claim people. The Nobel prize, for example, is given to a person not a country... many seem to forget this when celebrating in Poland.
As Cavesa wrote, people can certainly fall neatly into these narrow boxes (German, Pole, Swede) especially in the contemporary period. However, enough of them (of us) do not. This reveals the whole nationality-based categorization process as a bit of a sham. Something, which rings even more true the further we go back in time, before nation-states, as we understand them today, belonged in the collective imagination.
Probably not the answer you were interested in reading OP, sorry. Got carried away...