Edifice

By Andrzej Klimowski. Published by Self Made Hero. 

Softcover, 296 pages, B&W, 2024. 

A graphic Grand Hotel of our dreams, desires, and nightmares—and a Christmas Carol like no other

At the heart of the dream city of Engelstadt stand the tall storys 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.”

PRAISE FOR ANDRZEJ KLIMOWSKI:
“He leads the field by a very long furlong, out on his own, making his own weather. He is Klimowski, unafraid.” — Harold Pinter

“Majestic art.” — The Guardian

“Profound, playful, and unexpectedly haunting” — Times Literary Supplement

“A preternatural master of the graphic novel form.” — The Times