Utopia comes with a price in this European cartoonist's graphic novel debut inspired by his mid-century colonialist grandfather
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.
Published by Fantagraphics, 2025
USA import
Paperback with flaps
256 color pages
7.7" × 9.5"
Finalist, 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Graphic Novel/Comics
Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year
"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
Utopia comes with a price in this European cartoonist's graphic novel debut inspired by his mid-century colonialist grandfather
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.
Published by Fantagraphics, 2025
USA import
Paperback with flaps
256 color pages
7.7" × 9.5"
Finalist, 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize – Graphic Novel/Comics
Shortlist, Slate's 2014 Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of the Year
"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
