Skip to product information
1 of 6

The Green Hand and Other Stories (Paperback)

The Green Hand and Other Stories (Paperback)

by Nicole Claveloux, introduction by Daniel Clowes, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith

Regular price $22.95
Regular price Sale price $22.95
Format

Nicole Claveloux’s short stories—originally published in the late 1970s and never before collected in English—are among the most beautiful comics ever drawn: whimsical, intoxicating, with the freshness and splendor of dreams. In hallucinatory color or elegant black-and-white, she brings us into lands that are strange but oddly recognizable, filled with murderous grandmothers and lonely city dwellers, bad-tempered vegetables and walls that are surprisingly easy to fall through. In the title story, written with Edith Zha, a new houseplant becomes the first step in an epic journey of self-discovery and a witty fable of modern romance—complete with talking shrubbery, a wised-up genie, and one very depressed bird.

This selection, designed and introduced by Daniel Clowes, presents the full achievement of an unforgettable, unjustly neglected master of French comics.

Additional Book Information

Series: New York Review Comics
ISBN: 9781681376684
Pages: 108
Publication Date:

Praise

Darkly humorous, existential, erotic, trance inducing — these comics wield a rare and innovative power....The brilliance of [Claveloux's] comics lies in what they require of the viewer, to be intimate with what is not known, both within the work and themselves.
—Leopoldine Core, The New York Times

Like a time capsule, these 1970s stories by French cartoonist Claveloux—largely untranslated and unseen in the States until this collection—are a reminder of just how outrageous and imaginative comics could be back in that freewheeling decade.... Claveloux’s exquisitely detailed illustrations reflect such contemporary forces as underground comix artists from Robert Crumb to Victor Moscoso, designer Heinz Edelman, and the Day-Glo colors of psychedelic posters.... Her amalgam, though, is a singularly remarkable trip.
Booklist

Nicole Claveloux’s comics come across as odd, mind-bending "What If’s."….The work, certainly, has that air of being created at an inspired moment, with "The Green Hand" in particular presenting as a little-recognized masterpiece.
The Comics Journal

The artwork...is some of the most beautiful ever created for our lowly form—vivid, dreamlike, with intensely vivid hand-separated colors unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
—Daniel Clowes

Claveloux[’s]...explicitly adult pop-art fantasia delivers emotional insight and imaginative visuals that take the driver’s seat away from the strong logic of the narrative and enjoyably amble readers toward the byways of the subconscious with hauntingly powerful designs and sagacious observation.
Library Journal, starred review

View full details
  • Shopping for someone else but not sure what to give them? Give them the gift of choice with a New York Review Books Gift Card.

    Gift Cards 
  • A membership for yourself or as a gift for a special reader will promise a year of good reading.

    Join NYRB Classics Book Club 
  • Is there a book that you’d like to see back in print, or that you think we should consider for one of our series? Let us know!

    Tell us about it