Dig and Drift

In a delicate, sometimes searing send-up of documentary cartooning, Delphine Panique’s “comics of the unreal” stitch together vignettes of an eerie dreamworld, not dissimilar from our own, and its most marginalized workers: single migrant mothers. A seasonal worker trains messenger pigeons, necessary in a country that can’t give up instant communication after the disappearance of electricity; a woman who never wanted to be a mother is tricked into caring for a house full of strange children in a coastal town whose rising waters its wealthy residents are fleeing; a fleet of couriers circulate among people who live completely indoor lives supported by deliveries until, one day, the packages seem different…

Vibrant, smart, and masterfully spun, Dig and Drift at once summons humor, tragedy, and ironic, steely optimism. The indomitable spirit of working women reverberates throughout the book, translated into English for the first time by translator Devorah Fischler.