Arsene Schrauwen

In 1947, Arsène Schrauwen boarded a cruise ship. He crossed the ocean to join a mysterious colony. Olivier Schrauwen's grandfather did this long journey at the request of his cousin Roger. There, he resides on the vast his parent's domain and acclimatizes himself with difficulty to local life. Once on foot, Roger reveals his plans to him. Together, they will create the impossible, a utopian city in the heart of the wild world which will answer to the sweet name of “Freedom Town ». Achieving this goal will be a most difficult undertaking. Arsène falls madly in love with Marieke, his cousin's wife at the time when the latter is interned because of a temporary mental imbalance. Arsène will leave then alone and inexperienced at the head of the expedition to land promise. He will have to face the dangers of the jungle, come to terms with its feelings for Marieke and dealing with a strange tropical virus that threatens to decimate his men. Gradually, he will lose control and move away from reality, sinking into his own paranoia. A fantasy biography, a parody of colonialist adventure stories, the story narrated by Olivier Schrauwen is captivating, funny, and resolutely surrealist. This rising and unmissable figure of the new Flemish comic strip is no exception. This is not his first attempt. He happily plays with the codes and reinvents himself with each of his projects. After a few notable publications, The author with the fertile imagination delivers here a great work which will get people talking of her, both by her ambition and by the mastery of her execution. Thanks to a perfectly thought-out composition, the reader is invited to lose himself through the events and dreamlike digressions of the main character. To this end, Olivier Shrauwen uses an atypical graphic device combining figurative representations and geometric shapes which sometimes border abstraction. Its old-fashioned style is accompanied by a two-tone blue and red; stage directions demarcating reality from the imaginary.