A Book to Make Friends With

Lukas Verstraete

Fantagraphics

A dizzying, psychedelic and psychological journey of a man in search of himself, rendered in hyper-energetic, eye-popping colored pencils.

Tick, tick, boom. Open the cover of this graphic novel to unleash a bombastic bomb blast of frenetic line work, a cacophony of vibrant color, and an action-packed narrative that whirls and swirls in all directions like the furious, roaring winds of a mushroom cloud. Enter the blast radius of this conflagration of imagination and experience how brilliantly its creative fires burn.

A Book to Make Friends With marks the explosive English language debut of Flemish cartoonist Lukas Verstraete. What begins as a Pulp Fiction-inspired heist, in which two masked gangsters rob a passerby of his mysterious briefcase, soon snowballs into a psychedelic journey full of chase scenes, shapeshifting, soul possession, spiritual hallucinations, and unrequited romance. It all culminates in an epic, breathtakingly rendered battle between good and evil. At turns playful, philosophical, and kinetically riotous, you’ve never seen a graphic novel quite like this. Printed as an oversized hardcover edition encased in a luxurious slipcase, this book is as much a gorgeous aesthetic object as an engrossing work of fiction.