A funny and insightful retrospective collection from a celebrated cartoonist.
Guy Delisle Book order
Guy Delisle is a celebrated graphic novelist whose works draw from his unique experiences abroad. Through keen observation, he captures the cultural differences and everyday absurdities encountered in foreign lands. His approach is marked by humor and an outsider's perspective, allowing readers to see the world through a distinct lens. Delisle's style offers a critical yet empathetic look at globalization and human connection.







- 2022
- 2021
Factory Summers
- 156 pages
- 6 hours of reading
"For three summers beginning when he was 16, cartoonist Guy Delisle worked at a pulp and paper factory in Quebec City. Factory Summers chronicles the daily rhythms of life in the mill, and the twelve-hour shifts he spent in a hot, noisy building filled with arcane machinery. Delisle takes his noted outsider perspective and applies it domestically, this time as a boy amongst men through the universal rite of passage of the summer job. Even as a teenager, Delisle's keen eye for hypocrisy highlights the tensions of class and the rampant sexism an all-male workplace permits... Guy and his dad aren't close, and Guy's witnessing of the workplace politics and toxic masculinity leaves him reconciling whether the job was the reason for his dad's unhappiness. On his days off, Guy found refuge in art, a world far beyond the factory floor. Delisle shows himself rediscovering comics at the public library, and preparing for animation school--only to be told on the first day, 'There are no jobs in animation.' Eager to pursue a job he enjoys and to avoid a career of unhappiness, Guy throws caution to the wind."-- Provided by publisher
- 2019
The Handbook To Lazy Parenting
- 196 pages
- 7 hours of reading
And the award for worst dad ever still goes to
- 2018
PYONGYANG A JOURNEY IN NORTH KOREA
- 192 pages
- 7 hours of reading
The perennial graphic novel about a “hermit country,” with a new cover and an introduction by Gore Verbinski Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea is the graphic novel that made his career, an international bestseller for more than ten years. Delisle became one of the few Westerners to be allowed access to the fortress-like country when he was working in animation for a French company. While living in the nation’s capital for two months on a work visa, Delisle observed everything he was allowed to see of the culture and lives of the few North Koreans he encountered, bringing a sardonic and skeptical perspective on a place rife with propaganda. As a guide to the country, Delisle is a non-believer with a keen eye for the humor and tragedy of dictatorial whims, expressed in looming architecture and tiny, omnipresent photos of the president. The absurd vagaries of everyday life become fodder for a frustrated animator’s musings as boredom and censorship sink in. Delisle himself is the ideal foil for North Korean spin, the grumpy outsider who brought a copy of George Orwell’s 1984 with him into the totalitarian nation. Pyongyang is an informative, personal, and accessible look at a dangerous and enigmatic country.
- 2017
Hostage
- 432 pages
- 16 hours of reading
HOW DOES ONE SURVIVE WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST? In the middle of the night in 1997, Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe Andre was kidnapped by armed men and taken away to an unknown destination in the Caucasus region. For three months, Andre was kept handcuffed in solitary confinement, with little to survive on and almost no contact with the outside world. Close to twenty years later, award-winning cartoonist Guy Delisle (Pyongyang, Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Burma Chronicles) recounts Andre's harrowing experience in Hostage, a book that attests to the power of one man's determination in the face of a hopeless situation. Marking a departure from the author's celebrated first-person travelogues, Delisle tells the story through the perspective of the titular captive, who strives to keep his mind alert as desperation starts to set in. Working in a pared down style with muted colour washes, Delisle conveys the psychological effects of solitary confinement, compelling us to ask ourselves some difficult questions regarding the repercussions of negotiating with kidnappers and what it really means to be free. Thoughtful, intense, and moving, Hostage takes a profound look at what drives our will to survive in the darkest of moments.
- 2014
Even More Bad Parenting Advice
- 191 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Laugh-out-loud anecdotes from the front lines of parenting.
- 2013
A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting
- 190 pages
- 7 hours of reading
Meditations on fatherhood from the author of Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City With A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting, the trademark dry humor that pervades Guy Delisle's landmark and praised graphic travelogues takes center stage. Quick, light vignettes play on the worries and cares any young parent might have, and offer wry solutions to the petty frustrations of being a dad who works from home. Readers familiar with Delisle's stranger-in-a-strange-land technique for storytelling (employed in Jerusalem, Pyongyang, Burma, and Shenzhen) will recognize the titular parent in this book; Delisle's travelogues were simultaneously portraits of complex places and times, and portraits of a stay-at-home dad's ever-changing relationship with his children while his wife is out working for Doctors Without Borders. The relationship between young child and all-too-irony-aware parent is beautifully done here, and Delisle's loose flowing style has been set free, creating a wonderful sense of motion throughout. A User's Guide to Neglectful Parenting is an intimate, offbeat look at the joys of parenting.
- 2012
Shenzhen. A Travelogue from China
- 152 pages
- 6 hours of reading
Shenzhen is entertainingly compact with Guy Delisle's observations of life in urban southern China, sealed off from the rest of the country by electric fences and armed guards. With a dry wit and a clean line, Delisle makes the most of his time spent in Asia overseeing outsourced production for a French animation company. He brings to life the quick pace of Shenzhen's crowded streets. By translating his fish-out-of-water experiences into accessible graphic novels, Delisle skillfully notes the differences between Western and Eastern cultures, while also conveying his compassion for the simple freedoms that escape his colleagues in the Communist state.
- 2012
Jerusalem
- 344 pages
- 13 hours of reading
"[Jerusalem] is a small miracle: concise, even-handed, highly particular." —The Guardian Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City is the acclaimed graphic memoirist Guy Delisle's strongest work yet, a thoughtful and moving travelogue about life in contemporary Jerusalem. Delisle expertly lays the groundwork for a cultural road map of the Holy City, utilizing the classic "stranger in a strange land" point of view that made his other books required reading for understanding what daily life is like in cities few are able to travel to. Jerusalem explores the complexities of a city that represents so much to so many. It eloquently examines the impact of conflict on the lives of people on both sides of the wall while drolly recounting the quotidian: checkpoints, traffic jams, and holidays. When observing the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations that call Jerusalem home, Delisle's drawn line is both sensitive and fair, assuming nothing and drawing everything. A sixteen-page appendix to the paperback edition lets the reader behind the curtain, revealing intimate process sketches from Delisle's time in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is a masterfully hewn travelogue; topping Best of 2012 lists from The Guardian, Paste, and the Montreal Gazette, it was the graphic novel of the year.
- 2012
Jerusalem : chronicles from the Holy City
- 336 pages
- 12 hours of reading
Acclaimed graphic memoirist Delisle returns with a thoughtful and moving travelogue about life in East Jerusalem and his involvement with the brutal, three-week Gaza War.

