Ruins
By Peter Kuper
Hardback, 328 pp, $29.95
Samantha and George are a couple heading towards a sabbatical year in the quaint Mexican town of Oaxaca. For Samantha, it is the opportunity to revisit her past. For George, it is an unsettling step into the unknown. For both of them, it will be a collision course with political and personal events that will alter their paths and the town of Oaxaca forever. In tandem, the remarkable and arduous journey that a monarch butterfly endures on its annual migration from Canada to Mexico is woven into Ruins. This creates a parallel picture of the challenges of survival in our ever-changing world. Ruins explores the shadows and light of Mexico through its past and present as encountered by an array of characters. The real and surreal intermingle to paint an unforgettable portrait of life south of the Rio Grande.
Best Graphic Album: Eisner Awards 2016
Best International Graphic Novel: Lucca Awards 2017 (Italy)
Best Graphic Album: Eisner Awards 2016
Best International Graphic Novel: Lucca Awards 2017 (Italy)
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Peter Kuper
Peter Kuper’s work appears regularly in The New Yorker, The Nation, and Mad, where he wrote and illustrated “Spy vs. Spy” for 26 years. In 1979 he co-founded World War 3 Illustrated, a political comix magazine that is still published to this day. He has produced over two dozen books including Sticks and Stones, The System, Diario de Oaxaca, Drawn to New York, adaptations of many of Franz Kafka’s works, including The Metamorphosis and the short story collection Kafkaesque, as well as Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. Translations of his work have appeared in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Slovenia, China, Brazil, Poland, Sweden, Israel, Turkey, Germany, and Mexico. Peter has lectured and exhibited his work extensively throughout the world and teaches Harvard University’s first ever class dedicated to graphic novels.
In 2016 his graphic novel Ruins won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. He was also the 2020–21 Jean Strouse Fellow at The New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, received a 2022 Yaddo residency, and won the 2024 RFK Cartoon Award. He is currently working on a graphic novel on the history of insects and the people who study them.
In 2016 his graphic novel Ruins won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album. He was also the 2020–21 Jean Strouse Fellow at The New York Public Library’s Cullman Center, received a 2022 Yaddo residency, and won the 2024 RFK Cartoon Award. He is currently working on a graphic novel on the history of insects and the people who study them.
Reviews
"Kuper's art is, page after page, astonishing."
— Jules Feiffer
"The bright, incident-packed panels of Oaxacan life are nicely balanced by lovely sketches of insects and the sparer rendering of the butterfly's journey, its fragile orange wings warm against blue-grey landscapes."
— The Guardian
"This magnificent graphic novel by Kuper follows an American couple who decamp for Oaxaca, Mexico, for a sabbatical and creative recharge, only to get far more than they bargained for… It's a beautiful, epic roman à clef about the importance of seeking the new and questioning the old."
— Publishers Weekly