Parallel Lives

Plot

From one of the world’s most celebrated cartoonists comes this unique collection of six wildly inventive short stories, each a surrealist tour de forcet hat might collectively be dubbed “speculative memoir.” Schrauwen’s deadpan depictions of his and his progeny’s futures are presented with such brio and conviction that even the most jaded reader will ask himself: was the author really abducted by extraterrestrials? Is he actually able to dialogue with agents from the future? Does he truly receive coded messages in envelopes at breakfast? In spite of all rational perception, and in spite of the author’s obvious predilection for cartoon surrealism, Parallel Lives resonates as something more than simply the overheated imagination of an artist creating freely — it glows and hums and pulsates like a portal to another reality, and is the latest masterpiece in one of comics’ most distinctive bodies of work.