This collects six wildly inventive short comics stories that might collectively be dubbed “speculative memoir.” Schrauwen’s deadpan depictions of his and his offspring's upcoming lives include alien abduction, dialogue with future agents, and coded messages in envelopes at breakfast.
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. This first full-length graphic novel from the critically-acclaimed Olivier Schrauwen is an engrossing, sometimes funny, slightly surreal and often beautiful narrative.