Cycling across Tibet, Nybrandt learned about the heartbreaking treatment the Tibetan people received at the hands of the Chinese Government, but also their love of soccer. He envisioned a Tibetan national football team to create awareness of their plight and showcase their unique culture – without reference to politics. This is the story of how the team came to be.

Dreams in Thin Air

Comics & Graphic Novels

Nybrandt, Michael M

Graphic Novels

Conundrum International

"Igor Hofbauer is the Charles Burns of the Balkans." —Nina Bunjevac 
Legendary Croatian poster artist Igor Hofbauer launches his debut book of dark and visionary graphic stories, based on a combination of classic American underground comics and film noir, pop art, German Expressionism, and Russian Constructivism. Hofbauer's comics are often surreal and nightmarish stories in strange cityscapes that will be recognized by anyone who has spent time in the concrete housing and brutish planned neighborhoods of the former Eastern Bloc.

Mister Morgen

Hofbauer, Igor

Weegee was a street photographer for New York's popular press in the 1940s. He was infamous for adjusting the position of dead bodies at crime scenes to make his photographs more pleasing to the eye. Wauter Mannaert and Max de Radiguès have succeeded beautifully in capturing the contrasts in Weegee's life in pictures: the eternal doubt over whether to choose his violin or his photography; the streets and neighbourhoods of New York that he loves but also wants to escape; his photographs, which are printed in the popular press but should be on the walls of galleries. Their approach turns the creator of the book Naked City into a man of flesh and blood and makes you identify with him, so his rather tragic fate hits all the harder. The style in which Mannaert has drawn Weegee's hectic life is a perfect fit. His distinctive black-and-white drawings create the impression that you're walking with Weegee through New York's iconic Lower East Side of eighty years ago.

Weegee: Serial Photographer

Arts & Photography

De Radiguès, Max

Photography & Video

It all begins with a relationship update on social media. Summer vacation is about to begin, and Simon discovers the change just as his supposed girlfriend leaves to spend two months in a seaside village. Determined to find out what went wrong, Simon decides to hitchhike 350 miles to find her. With just his backpack and a few snacks, he sneaks out of the house and hits the road―but he quickly discovers that he isn’t quite prepared for the journey. But that’s only half the story. Unaware of the miscommunication, Louise is dealing with social challenges of her own. Written and illustrated from both points of view by the award-winning creator of Moose (nominated for an Eisner Award for Teens), this is a story about two people in love and the chaos that happens when technology gets in the way. Simon & Louise is the perfect beach read for fans of This One Summer.

Simon & Louise

Daria Bogdanska moves to Malmö to attend art school, sets out to find a job, and discovers that in order to work in the country legally, she needs a Swedish personal identity number. But there is a catch: she can't get one without securing a job first. To make ends meet, Daria starts working under the table at an Indian restaurant. There, she discovers another level of inequity: lacking regulation, the underground job market is forcing immigrants to settle for a substandard quality of life. In turning to a union for help she sparks a legal battle that ultimately leads to fairer work practices for the people in her community. Reminiscent of the style of Julie Doucet, Wage Slaves is the autobiographical story of Daria Bogdanska's determined struggle to build a life in Malmö, and how she found a way to succeed, against all odds.

Wage Slaves

Bogdanska, Daria

Drawn with guileful clarity and bite, The Unknown is a story of deceit, self-deception and the search for happiness. One day, Helen finds a newborn abandoned in a changing room in her boutique. She decides to keep it, nested in a cardboard box and hidden even from her husband. Vicky and Wanda are boarding school roommates. Wanda talks Vicky into turning tricks. Meanwhile, Vicky can't keep her secrets from Wanda - not her affair with their history teacher, and not the pregnancy she tries to sabotage and yet stubbornly carries out. As the two narratives converge, coincidences and secrets are revealed. Incisive, wicked and breezily unconcerned by taboos, Anna Sommer lets readers put together the pieces of her morally ambiguous fable.

The Unknown

Sommer, Anna

To debut our new Conundrum International Imprint we have chosen the stories of Chihoi, a young Hong Kong artist, who has had books published in Chinese, Italian and French. The Library is the first English edition of his work. Reading the short stories included in this volume is like reading someone else’s dreams. “The Library” or “Father” reminds one of Kafka; “I’m with my Saint” feels Gauginesque. All the stories feel like smudged emotions, they speak to regular hurt and deprivation, strength in silence and loneliness in numbers. Questions are asked without question marks and are left unanswered even as the stories end. The Library is book of beautiful pencil lines, written to illustrate the tales we know in our heart but have never witnessed. Chihoi is a poet of the quotidian, of life’s minutia, of little gestures, of silences. He is also the poet of the invisible, invoking the spirit of a dead person or a lost love, and rendering him/her real. He offers us his stories with a little melancholy at the corner of his smile and he illuminates them with a warm spark. He imbues them with a rhythm, like a conversation, by the pauses. His stories are more complicated than they appear, they are open and complex and full of little contradictions and they resonate long after we turn the last page. They are like the calm after a storm, when the wind finally dies down and the landscape is revealed anew.

The Library

Chihoi

This sequel to The Years of the Elephant uses a wide-angle lens to examine one family's drama, dealing with grief and alcoholism. Fortunately, in emergencies they can consult "The Book," in which their mother has collected innumerable facts, recipes, and advice on what we all need to know.

What We Need To Know

Linthout, Willy

Already published in Chinese and Italian, The Train is the follow up to Chihoi’s successful book of stories The Library. In it Hong Kong artist Chihoi adapts a short story by Taiwanese writer Hung Hung about a surreal train ride. With dream-like logic one of the characters asks, “Have you ever imagined the world outside the train?” The protagonist waits for someone, a woman perhaps, and observes with trepidation each time a new car is coupled to the train and the occupants spill out. Chihoi has done it again in this beautifully rendered pencilscape of a dream.

Train

Hung, Hung

Manga

A group of anarchist punks plan to sabotage the opening of a multi-national restaurant by blowing it sky-high. Still reeling from a friend's suicide and struggling to reconcile his spiritual path with his political actions, the main character Chopstick's journey is a meditation on life, love, friendship, and the ghost of Kurt Cobain.

The Dharma Punks

Sang, Ant

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Books by Conundrum International