Alone
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Available in English for the first time—the internationally bestselling graphic novel and an Official Selection at France’s prestigious Angoulême Internaional Comics Festival by master illustrator-storyteller Chabouté (Park Bench, Moby-Dick).
On a tiny lighthouse island far from the rest of the world, a lonely hermit lives out his existence. Every week a supply boat leaves provisions, its occupants never meeting him, never asking the obvious questions: Who are you? Why do you hide? Why do you never leave? What is it like to be so alone?
Years spent on a deserted rock—a lifetime, really—with imagination his sole companion has made the lighthouse keeper something more than alone, something else entirely. For him, what lies beyond the horizon might be...nothing. And so, why not stay put? But one day, as a new boatman starts asking the questions all others have avoided, a chain of events unfolds that will irrevocably upend the hermit’s solitary life....
Filled with stunning and richly executed black-and-white illustrations, Alone is Chabouté’s masterpiece—an unforgettable tale where tenderness, despair, and humor intertwine to flawlessly portray how someone can be an everyman, and every man is someone.
Translated from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In a remote lighthouse lives a shy, deformed man, the son of the long-departed lighthouse keeper, who has never been off the tiny island. Fishermen bring him supplies. For entertainment, he looks up words in a tattered dictionary and tries to imagine the baffling outside world they describe. (Reading that an oboe is an "instrument with holes and keys," he pictures something like a violin studded with door keys.) Then a curious fisherman sends him a note, and a crack of light shines into his boxed-in existence. This small, graceful story becomes a lush fairy tale through Chabout 's stunning black-and-white art; he lavishes loving detail on the hermit's fantastic inner life and his daily routines on the starkly beautiful island. Chabout is justly celebrated in his native France, and this is widely regarded as his masterpiece. It's a visually stunning humanist fable.
