The Cardboard Valise

Ben Katchor ("The creator of the last great American comic strip."-Michael Chabon) gives us his first book in more than ten years: the story of the fantastical nation of Outer Canthus and the three people who, in some way or another, inshy;habit its shores. Emile Delilah is a young xenophile (lover of foreign nations) so addicted to traveling to the exotic regions of Outer Canthus that the government pays him a monthly stipend just so he can continue his visits. Livshy;ing in the same tenement as Emile are Boreal Rince, the exiled king of Outer Canthus, and Elijah Salamis, a supranationalist determined to erase the cultural and geographic boundaries that separate the citizens of the Earth. Although they rarely meet, their lives inshy;tertwine through the elaborate fictions they construct and inhabit: a vast panorama of humane hamburger stands, exquisitely ethereal ethnic restaurants, ancient restroom ruins, and wild tracts of land that fit neatly next to high-rise hotels.The Cardboard Valiseis a graphic novel as travelogue; a canvas of semi-surrealism; and a poetic, whimsical, beguiling work of Ben Katchorrs"s dazzling imagination.

BEN KATCHOR is the author of The Jew of New York; Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer: The Beauty Supply District; and several works of musical theater in collabora­tion with the composer Mark Mulcahy. He teaches at Par­sons The New School for Design and has contributed to The New Yorker, The Forward, and Metropolis. The first car­toonist to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, he is the subject of a documentary titled The Pleasures of Urban Decay. He lives in New York.