Misery of Love (Yvan Alagbé)

Colonial history haunts this stunning, spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures.

In Misery of Love, a spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, Yvan Alagbé continues his unflinching interrogation of race and family in modern France.

The book focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, who is reluctantly spending time with her relatives for a funeral. Alagbé seamlessly glides between narratives of the family s past and present, all haunted by the legacy of France s colonial subjugation of Africa.

Alagbé works in stormy grayscale washes, using comics, as he puts it, as a sacred dimension which celebrates, questions and perpetuates life.... I believe that life is not damnation but grace.

Told through time shifts that echo Richard McGuire s Here, Misery of Love is another ambitious, devastating masterpiece from one of France s best contemporary graphic novelists.

Yvan Alagbé was born in Paris and spent three years of his youth in West Africa. He is a cofounder of the publishing house Amok, which later merged with the Belgian publishing group Fréon to become Frémok, now a major European graphic novels publisher. He is the author of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. He teaches at Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg.
 
Donald Nicholson-Smith is a translator of French literature. He has translated works by writers such as Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as the noir fiction of Jean-Patrick Manchette and Thierry Jonquet. He is a Chevalier dans l Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born in Manchester, England, he lives in New York City.

Buch (Paperback), Englisch, 232 Seiten