Misery of Love

Colonial history haunts this stunning, spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures.

In Misery of Love, a spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, Yvan Alagbé continues his interrogation of race and family in modern France.

The book focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, who is spending time with her family for her grandfather’s funeral. Alagbé shifts between narratives of the family, all haunted by the legacy of France’s colonial subjugation of Africa.

Alagbé works in stormy grayscale washes, using comics, as he puts it, as “a sacred dimension which celebrates, questions and perpetuates life.... I believe that life is not damnation but grace.”

This is another ambitious, devastating masterpiece from one of France’s best contemporary cartoonists.

Yvan Alagbé was born in Paris and spent three years of his youth in West Africa. He is a cofounder of the publishing house Amok, which later merged with the Belgian publishing group Fréon to become Frémok, now a major European graphic novels publisher. He is the author of Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures. He teaches at Haute école des arts du Rhin in Strasbourg.
 
Donald Nicholson-Smith is a translator of French literature. He has translated works by writers such as Guy Debord, Henri Lefebvre, and Guillaume Apollinaire, as well as the noir fiction of Jean-Patrick Manchette and Thierry Jonquet. He is a Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Born in Manchester, England, he lives in New York City.