Arsène Schrauwen

Utopia comes with a price in this new 10th anniversary paperback edition of the acclaimed comedic graphic novel inspired by the author's mid-century colonialist grandfather.

Publisher Marketing: In this crackpot graphic novel from the historically minded and utterly original Schrauwen, the Belgian cartoonist imagines a fanciful history that slips the bonds of reality almost immediately. ... The author's obsessions with infestation, death, mutation, and genitalia, scroll in a continuous waking dream set amid a Magritte-Dali landscape.-- "Publishers Weekly Starred Review" Review Quotes : This is a book of imagination and tale-telling.-- "American Book Review" Review Quotes : While reading this graphic novel, I kept thinking, 'I can't believe how smart Oliver Schrauwen is.' Every page reveals an eccentric and original cartooning mind at work. ... Taken together, [his] artistic choices make for an oddly moving way to tell an uncanny story, an epic surrealist adventure in architectural modernity, European colonialism, social idealism, and sexual perversion.-- "The Comics Journal" Review Quotes : The book is flat-out one of the most complex and interesting--visually, thematically, conceptually--comics of the last few years.... The Belgian cartoonist is the embodiment of the idea that cartooning is writing with pictures, and with Arsène he proves himself a better writer than basically everyone else working today.-- "Paste" Publisher Marketing : In 1947, the author's grandfather, Arsène Schrauwen, traveled across the ocean to a mysterious, dangerous jungle colony at the behest of his cousin. Together they would build something deemed impossible: a modern utopia in the wilderness -- but not before Arsène falls in love with his cousin's wife, Marieke. Whether delirious from love or a fever-inducing jungle virus, Arsène's loosening grip on reality is mirrored by the graphic novel reader's uncertainty of what is imagined or real by Arsène. This first full-length graphic novel from the critically acclaimed Olivier Schrauwen is an engrossing, sometimes funny, slightly surreal and often beautiful narrative.

Format: Paperback | Pages: 256 | Publication Date: 2025-05-20