Parallel Lives - Olivier Schrauwen

Parallel Lives by Olivier Schrauwen / ISBN 9781683961406 / 128-page softcover, 8 x 11.2 inches, full-color, published by Fantagraphics

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One of comics’ true visionary formalists reinvents science fiction in this graphic novel.

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.

“A dazzling and disorienting collection of short stories detailing the author’s interactions with the future. … By the final page, it’s the reader who has been abducted, by the cartoonist, captivated by witnessing time and space made malleable in Schrauwen’s hands.” — The New Yorker

“A potent volume of linked and mangled autofictions, with delirious color chords you only find in dreams.” — The New York Times

“In Schrauwen’s mind-inverting masterpiece Parallel Lives, the cartoonist’s alien abduction branches into a series of funny and frightening psychosexual ruminations on the nature of relationships that feel as fresh and strange as human life actually is.” — The Guardian