Swimming in Darkness

by Lucas Harari, David Homel (Translator)

Overview

An NPR Best Book of the Year

Pierre is a young man at a crossroads. He drops out of architecture school and decides to travel to Vals in the Swiss Alps, home to a thermal springs complex located deep inside a mountain. The complex, designed by architect Peter Zumthor, had been the subject of Pierre’s thesis. The mountain holds many mysteries; it was said to have a mouth that periodically swallowed people up. Pierre, sketchbook in hand, is drawn to the enigmatic powers of the mountain and its springs, and attempts to uncover the truth behind them in the secret rooms he discovers deep within the complex. But he finds his match in a man named Valeret who is similarly obsessed, and who’d like nothing more than to eliminate his competitor.

Gorgeously illustrated, Swimming in Darkness is an intriguing, noirish graphic novel about uncovering the powerful secrets of the natural world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781551527673
Publisher:	Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Pages:	152
Sales rank:	1,081,563
Product dimensions:	9.20(w) x 12.10(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

David Homel (translator) is a writer, journalist, filmmaker, and translator, and the author of seven novels. He has translated many French-language books into English and is a two-time recipient of the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation.

Lucas Harari was born in Paris in 1990, where he still lives, and has a degree in decorative arts with a special interest in printed works. He self-published fanzines before working as an illustrator for book publishers and others. Swimming in Darkness is his first book.

Editorial Reviews

11/04/2019

Harari melds academia, obsession, and mysticism in this eerie graphic novel about a young man traveling through a mysterious network of mountainside baths. Pierre, a French grad student who dropped out of school after a mental breakdown, decides to confront the object of his obsessive thesis: the Vals Thermal Baths in Switzerland. Along the way, he learns there’s a legend that “every hundred years, the mountain chooses a foreigner, lures him into its mouth, and swallows him up.” Pierre encounters a rival who will stop at nothing to gain the bath’s secrets, a woman also fascinated by their maze, and an eccentric hermit who tells him the legend is true. Harari works in a clear line with a sickly pastel palette, and his attention to architectural detail is crucial in establishing the strange, sinister mood. Disappearing doors, murder attempts, and unexpected romance all lead Pierre to his inevitable destiny with the mountain. This is a stylish, atmospheric book whose deliberate pacing deliciously builds tension and mystery. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

"Harari's tale is pulpy noir by way of Hitchcock, with a strong, Lynchian hint of the uncanny." -NPR’s "Best Books of the Year" list

"This noirish modern of mysterious architectures, strange geometries and people drowning in obsession is eerily unsettling and completely mesmerising." —Warren Ellis

"Swimming in Darkness is a beautifully rendered mystery. Its pages teem with secret passages, showing us that Earth has an architecture beyond our recognition." —Samuel Sattin, author of Legend

"Much like the mountain in Swimming In Darkness, Harari's intricate, puzzle-like grid will pull you in, and swallow you whole." —Elsa Charretier, author of November Vol. 1

"Praise for this book cannot be overstated ... From the opening pages, Swimming in Darkness grabs the reader and refuses to let go, creeping slowly through an uncanny realm where fiction and reality dance together in a haunting and unforgettable waltz." —Comic Watch

"Harari incorporates local legend with the history of architecture, particularly the idea of secret rooms, and wraps these all around Zumthor's conundrum of a structure and the stylistic forms of noir ... Compelling." —Comics Beat

From the Publisher

12/01/2019

DEBUT Promising architectural student Pierre drops out of school after suffering a mental breakdown while writing a dissertation on marvelous and eerie baths built atop a thermal spring in the Swiss Alps. Unable to move on, even as he's blocked from writing, he visits the site, where he swims, sketches, and discovers secret rooms and corridors that may be connected to a local legend stating that the mountain possesses a mouth that magically opens once every century. Debuter Harari creates a growing sense of dread as Pierre encounters inexplicable phenomena, townsfolk who know more than they're willing to share, and a French writer determined to stop him from delving further into the mysteries by any means necessary. VERDICT Harari's adept skills as a storyteller are elevated even further by his talents as a designer with a strong sense of color, as pleasantly round, cartoonish characters wander angular planes and inhabit a world filled with warm, glowing red rooms and grainy, foreboding purple skies.

Library Journal