Misery of Love

Colonial history haunts this stunning, spectral-looking graphic novel, a spiritual sequel to the author’s Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures.

In Misery of Love, a spiritual sequel to the acclaimed Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures, Yvan Alagbé continues his unflinching interrogation of race and family in modern France.

The book focuses on the dream-like memories of a woman named Clare, who is reluctantly spending time with her relatives for a funeral. Alagbé seamlessly glides between narratives of the family’s past and present, all haunted by the legacy of France’s colonial subjugation of Africa.

Alagbé 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.”

Told through time shifts that echo Richard McGuire’s Here, Misery of Love is another ambitious, devastating masterpiece from one of France’s best contemporary graphic novelists.