Edifice
By Andrzej Klimowski
Paperback with flaps, 296 pp, $19.99
At the heart of the dream city of Engelstadt stand the tall storeys of an ancient apartment block, home to a nightmare labyrinth of corridors and secrets. Christmas is coming, but the mysterious disappearance of one of its tenants causes a cast of characters (or suspects?) to be assembled before us.
An elderly aristocratic widow plays the piano; a young mother disciplines her hallucinating son; a photographer pursues creative experiments under the magnetic spell of the moon. And meanwhile, as a dark cloud threatens to envelop the city, and caped crusaders (or marauders) wander its park, there is a film screening to attend. The eccentric Professor will surely solve the enigma on Christmas Eve… Or will he?
A pan-European Pandora’s Box of narrative Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, Edifice builds into an Expressionist graphic vision of our archetypal, metamorphic Shadows. Whether or not “an allegory of some sort” (as one of these characters claims), Andrzej Klimowski’s masterpiece of symbolic form is certainly one of the strangest Christmas stories you will ever read.
“If you look carefully, you will see it.”
An elderly aristocratic widow plays the piano; a young mother disciplines her hallucinating son; a photographer pursues creative experiments under the magnetic spell of the moon. And meanwhile, as a dark cloud threatens to envelop the city, and caped crusaders (or marauders) wander its park, there is a film screening to attend. The eccentric Professor will surely solve the enigma on Christmas Eve… Or will he?
A pan-European Pandora’s Box of narrative Russian dolls and Chinese boxes, Edifice builds into an Expressionist graphic vision of our archetypal, metamorphic Shadows. Whether or not “an allegory of some sort” (as one of these characters claims), Andrzej Klimowski’s masterpiece of symbolic form is certainly one of the strangest Christmas stories you will ever read.
“If you look carefully, you will see it.”
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Andrzej Klimowski
Andrzej Klimowski studied at St Martin's School of Art in London and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He has designed posters for theatres and film distributors in Poland, and book covers and illustrations for publishers in the UK. He is the author (with Danusia Schejbal) of Behind the Curtain, The Master and Margarita, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Robot. His own graphic novels include The Depository, The Secret and Horace Dorlan. Klimowski is Emeritus Professor at the Royal College of Art.