Arsene Schrauwen - Hardcover

Schrauwen, Olivier

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1606997300 ISBN 13: 9781606997307

Publisher: Fantagraphics Books, 2014

Synopsis

In 1947, the author’s grandfather, Arsene 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 Arsene falls in love with his cousin’s wife, Marieke. Whether delirious from love or a fever-inducing jungle virus, Arsene’s loosening grip on reality is mirrored by the graphic novel reader’s uncertainty of what is imagined or real by Arsene.

About this title

About the Author

Olivier Schrauwen was born in Belgium in 1977 and studied animation at the Academy of Art in Gent, and comics at the Saint Luc in Brussels. He currently lives in Berlin.

Review

“...Arsene Schrauwen is one of the most complex, and simply best, comics released this year. ...[It] uses simplified drawings, collage-like text and two colors (red and blue) to convey a narrative that moves between the real and the fantastic with grace and facility. The result is an experience both utterly original and strangely familiar, like a dream.”
- Hillary Brown, Paste

“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 Arsene he proves himself a better writer than basically everyone else working today.”
- Shea Hennum, Paste

“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. [Starred Review]”
- Publishers Weekly

“Occasionally, a creator kicks the comics-medium football not only over the goalposts but into another stadium entirely. Schrauwen’s off-the-wall ode to his grandfather’s life, love, and virus-induced mental walkabout -- rendered in burnt orange and cornflower blue -- is artistically simple but deeply symbolic. The whole book has the hallucinatory feel of a curious found item that inspires an uncanny anxiousness.”
- John DiBello, Publishers Weekly

“One of the very best graphic novels of the decade.”
- Dan Nadel, The Comics Journal

“I’ve found estimations like ‘Roy Andersson remaking Fitzcarraldo as an X-rated children’s comic’ to be personally useful in conveying the unique tone of this Olivier Schrauwen original ... I readily urge you deeper into this fascinating and disquieting experience.”
- Joe McCulloch, The Comics Journal

“This book is great and weird and frustrating and beautiful... Arsene Schrauwen is the best book of the year.”
- Tom Spurgeon, The Comics Reporter

“...Arsene Schrauwen reads like Conrad by way of Kafka, as drawn in pen and ink by the douanier Rousseau. Cockeyed, adventurous, and truly bizarre... Schrauwen’s portrait of the impulse towards empire may not be rooted in actual history, but it does loopy justice to the garish and arrogant irrationality of the whole colonial enterprise.”
- Sean Rogers, The Globe and Mail

“This is a book of imagination and tale-telling.”
- Joe McCulloch, American Book Review

“[Schrauwen's] work, strange and surreal, bears the influences of many 20th Century comics, but with a distinctly contemporary voice. They're strange and moving, full of delusional characters, and show Schrauwen's skills a master storyteller.”
- Alex Dueben, Comic Book Resources

Edition details

• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1606997300
• ISBN 13: 9781606997307
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 250