Admitted to a home for the elderly because he suffers from Alzheimer's disease, for Ernest community life feels like an ordeal. But soon he accepts his new environment and decides to fight to escape from giving in to his awful destiny. For the author, the human community is like a library where books are piled up in mountains populated by yellowing paper of dreams and fantasies.

Wrinkles

Comics & Graphic Novels

Roca, Paco

Graphic Novels

Knockabout

Retired bank manager Emilio, suffering from Alzheimer’s, is taken to an assisted living home by his son. He befriends his roommate Miguel, an overconfident ladies’ man. Together, they employ clever tricks to keep the doctors from noticing Emilio’s ongoing deterioration ― and keep him from being transferred to the dreaded confinement of the top floor of the facility. ("Better to die than to end up there." Their determination to stay active as individuals and maintain their dignity culminates in an adventurous escape.

Fantagraphics Books

Francisco, a wounded, despairing sixteen-year-old Republican guard in the Spanish Civil War, is trying to flee to freedom by crossing the French border. In his escape, he encounters an old remote lighthouse, far from the warring factions. He is granted shelter by Telmo, the aging operator of the lighthouse. As Francisco recuperates, Telmo’s tales of epic adventurers who sailed the lost seas and discovered worlds unknown reignite the spark of life in the young soldier. By one of the most brilliant new talents in comic art in Spain, author of the world-wide bestseller Wrinkles.

The Lighthouse

NBM Publishing

Miguel Ruiz is a Spanish veteran exiled in France who was a member of “La Nueve” ("The Nine"), a company of men that went straight from fighting for their homeland in the Spanish Civil War to battles spanning the globe in WWII. Their years-long trek across Europe and Africa was spurred on by their love for their country and their hatred for brutal dictatorships. Roca uses the composite character Ruiz’s “memories” to tell a story that’s an ode to a generation that bravely stood up to, and beat back, violent fascism.

Twists Of Fate

In this graphic novel by the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Wrinkles cartoonist, three adult siblings relive old conflicts as they clear out the family vacation home after their father’s death. The graphic novel The House is at once deeply personal (dedicated to Roca’s own deceased father) and entirely universal. Three adult siblings return to their family’s vacation home a year after their father’s death. They each bring their respective wives, husbands, and children with the intention to clean up the residence and put it on the market. But, as garbage is hauled off and dust is wiped away, decades-old resentments quickly fill the vacant home. Roca asks what happens to brothers and sisters when the only person holding the family together is now gone. Full-color illustrations throughout

The House

In this Spanish language graphic novel by the internationally acclaimed, award-winning Wrinkles cartoonist, three adult siblings relive old conflicts as they clear out the family vacation home after their father’s death.
En la novela gráfica de Paco Roca, tres hermanos adultos regresan a la pintoresca casa de vacaciones de su familia un ano después de la muerte de su padre. A través de los recuerdos de cada hermano, Roca nos da una idea de los momentos domésticos de alegría, culpa y decepción al preguntar qué pasa con los hermanos y hermanas cuando la única persona que mantiene unida a la familia ahora se ha ido. A la vez, profundamente personal y completamente universal, La Casa detalla la lucha para superar el pasado, pero aún conserva los recuerdos. Full-color illustrations throughout.

La Casa

Paco Roca returns with another moving graphic novel that combines a fresh look at historical events with humour, compassion, and narrative mastery. The Winter of the Cartoonist provides historical context and short profiles of these artists - all prideful, enterprising, restless - as they serve as perfect everyday heroes for all of those who have chased a dream, no matter how high the obstacles that stand in front of them.

The Winter Of The Cartoonist

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Fantagraphics

This thrilling graphic novel, based on real events and which has been adapted into an AMC Plus miniseries (La Fortuna) starring Stanley Tucci, chronicles the intense legal and political battles sparked by the discovery of a priceless shipwreck. 
A Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection 
May 2007. When an American treasure-hunting company uncovers a shipwreck containing the greatest underwater trove ever found, the world is captivated by their discovery. But over in Spain, a group of low-level government officials surmises that the sunken ship is in fact an ancient Spanish vessel. Thus begins a legal and political thriller, pitting a group of idealistic diplomats against a rich and powerfully connected treasure hunter, in which vital cultural artifacts and hundreds of millions of dollars hang in the balance. 
Cartoonist Paco Roca and writer Guillermo Corral bring a cinematic flair to this graphic novel, combining threads of Tintin-inspired seafaring adventure, political intrigue, tense courtroom drama, and, in the midst of it all, a budding romance. A gripping dramatization of a little-known, unbelievable true story of money, political power, and cultural heritage. 
The Treasure of the Black Swan was adapted into an original television series, La Fortuna, starring Stanley Tucci and debuted in the US on AMC Plus in January 2022.\nFull-color illustrations throughout

The Treasure of the Black Swan

Corral, Guillermo

At 40, cartoonist Paco Roca has finally achieved his childhood dream -- to spend all day at home in his pajamas! However, his blissful, loungewear-clad reverie is beset with a host of mundane problems: He dreads small talk with "the world's biggest bore," but his excuses and white lies are finally catching up with him. When good friends breaks up, taking either side could lead to social disaster. The simple mission to change his train ticket descends into an impossibly complicated, Kafkaesque affair. And worst of all, his partner keeps hanging the toilet paper roll the wrong way! In the vein of sitcoms like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm, Roca's comic vignettes brilliantly satirize the pesky pitfalls of modern-day life. Like most of us, Roca's alter ego just wants to be liked and to do the right thing, but finds that through crippling indecision, cowardly behavior, and the absurd machinations of the universe, he is usually thwarted. The ensuing situations he finds himself embroiled in are as hilarious as they are often painfully relatable.

Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas

The celebrated Spanish cartoonist’s most ambitious work yet is a touching homage to his mother and a bittersweet depiction of life in post-war Spain. It all starts with a photograph: an ordinary scene of a young woman and her family picnicking at a Valencian beach in 1947. Now in her twilight years, Antonia cherishes this photo dearly; it holds the memories of her upbringing, her family ― the key to her Eden. Taking off from this routine family outing, cartoonist Paco Roca paints a heartfelt portrait of his mother’s formative years. This delicate portrayal of a humble family is at once an intimate biographical story and a broader reflection of the hardscrabble existence many faced in post-war Spain. Antonia and her family soldier through constant hunger, the shady dealings of the black market, traumas of war and parental abuse, and the oppressive atmosphere wrought by the Catholic church and Franco’s authoritarian regime ― and yet, they find oases of joy and wonder in cinema, imagination, and small acts of kindness. 
Roca is known the world over for his quietly powerful graphic novels, from Twists of Fate to The House, and this latest masterwork may just be his magnum opus. In Return to Eden, Roca manages to charge quotidian life with rare poignancy, in all its daily struggles and daydreams, and readers will come away deeply affected. Full-color illustrations throughout

Return to Eden

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roca, Paco. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Roca, Paco

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Roca, Paco. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wrinkles

Wrinkles

The Lighthouse

Twists Of Fate

The House

La Casa

The Winter Of The Cartoonist

The Treasure of the Black Swan

Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas

Return to Eden