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Olivier Schrauwen

Arsène Schrauwen

On sale date: May 20, 2025

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.

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.

Originally released in 2014, Arsène Schrauwen heralded the then largely-unknown-to-English readers Olivier Schrauwen as a major voice in international comics — a reputation that has only gained momentum over the ensuing decade with releases like 2024’s Sunday.

Praise

"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

"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

"This is a book of imagination and tale-telling." — American Book Review

"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

Specs

Pages
256
Format
Paperback / Softback
Color
Full-color
Dimensions
7.6" × 9.45"
ISBN-13
9798875000928
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