Misery of Love

＂In [this] spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, Yvan Alagbâe 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. Alagbâe shifts between narratives of the family, all haunted by the legacy of France’s colonial subjugation of Africa. Alagbâe 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’＂--

Yvan Alagbé was born in Paris and spent three years of his youth in West Africa. He returned to France to study mathematics and physics at the Université de Paris-Sud, where he met Olivier Marboeuf. Alagbé and Marboeuf founded the contemporary visual arts review L’oeil carnivore, the magazine Le Chéval sans tête (＂The Headless Horse＂), and a publishing house, Amok. In 2001, Amok partnered with the publiser Fréon to establish the Franco-Belgian collaboration Frémok, now a major European graphic novels publisher. New York Review Comics published Alagbé’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures in 2018. Alagbé lives in Paris.

Donald Nicholson-Smith has translated several works from the French for New York Review Books, including the NYRC collections The Green Hand and Other Stories by Nicole Claveloux and Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures by Yvan Alagbé. Born in Manchester, England, he is a longtime resident of New York City.