Bad Island (discounted) - Stanley Donwood

Bad Island by Stanley Donwood / ISBN 9781324001850 / 176-page hardback, 5.5 x 8.5 inches, published by WW Norton / remaindered copies in excellent condition.

***

A starkly beautiful, wordless graphic novel about the end of the world by the cult artist and longtime Radiohead collaborator.

A wild seascape, a distant island, a full moon. Gradually the island grows nearer until we land on a primeval wilderness, rich in vegetation and huge, strange beasts. Time passes and man appears, with clubs, with spears, with crueler weapons still―and things do not go well for the wilderness. Civilization rises as towers of stone and metal and smoke choke the undergrowth and the creatures that once moved through it. This is not a happy story, and it will not have a happy ending.

Working in his distinctive, monochromatic linocut style, Stanley Donwood achieves with his art what words cannot convey, carving out a mesmerizing, stark parable of environmental disaster and the end of civilization.

"A picture book of the damned―devoured quickly and savored for days."― Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

"A hypnotic, trenchant allegory that is both beautiful to look at and hard to look away from."― Publishers Weekly

"Bad Island is an extraordinary, unsettling document: a silent species-history in eighty frames, a mute future archive. I can imagine it discovered in the remnants of a civilization; a set of runes found amid the ruins. Stark in its lines and dark in its vision, Bad Island reads you more than you read it."― Robert Macfarlane, best-selling author of Underland

About the Author: Stanley Donwood is a graphic designer and artist who has worked with the band Radiohead, producing artwork for their albums and promotional materials. His books include Bad Island, Catacombs of Terror!, Slowly Downward, Small Thoughts, and There Will Be No Quiet. He lives in London.