Night Bus
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Journey through the countryside in this magical realist debut from an underground Chinese cartoonist
In Night Bus, a young woman wearing round glasses finds herself on an adventurous late night bus ride that constantly makes detours through increasingly fantastical landscapes. Meanwhile a young cartoonist returns home after art school and tries his hand at becoming a working artist while watching over his aging grandmother whose memory is deteriorating. Nostalgic leaps take us to an elementary school gymnasium that slowly morphs into a swamp and is raided by a giant catfish. Beetles, salamanders, and bug-eyed fish intrude upon the bus ride of the round-glasses woman as the night stretches on. Night Bus blends autobiography, horror, and fantasy into a vibrantly detailed surreal world that shows a distinct talent surveying his past.
Nature infringes upon the man-made world via gigantism and explosive abundance–the images in Night Bus are often unsettling, not aimed to horrify, but to upset the balance of modern life.
Zuo Ma is part of a burgeoning Chinese art comics scene that pushes emotion to the forefront of the story while playing with action and dreams.
Translated by Orion Martin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The somber but mesmerizing stories in Ma's debut collection follow a Lynchian dream logic, underpinned by themes of loss and a demented sense of humor. In "Niu Niu The Evil Hound," Ma spins a twisted tale starring an anthropomorphized version of a beloved shih tzu he owned long ago. Other pieces are similarly grounded in Ma's real-world experiences, such as dramatizing conversations about his professional stagnation, or his observations around China's industrializing landscape. But even the more realistic narratives get interrupted by an abrupt encounter with the uncanny. In "Night Bus," Ma reckons with his grandmother's memory loss by envisioning the journey she takes as her cognition returns and fades; Ma imagines her as a young woman traveling through a dreamscape in search of the "night bus" that will spirit her off to the next world, where she encounters a series of oddities, such as two boys hunting for giant snails who are suddenly surprised by a UFO shaped like a cocoon. While Ma's defiantly incomprehensible narratives leave an impression, it's not always sustainable in the longer selections. But adventurous readers will awe at Ma's transporting visions.
