Fior showcases his versatility and mastery of the form in this collection of short literary comics fiction.
In this collection, two giant robots battle it out in a European metropolis; an engineer is asked to inspect something unusual at a marble quarry; a recently relocated father loses his young son in Berlin’s Tempelhof Park; the painter Arnold Böcklin takes a trip before he paints his famous masterpiece, The Island of Death; and, an immigrant grandmother tells the story of how she escaped war in Indochina. Blackbird Days is rounded out with an autobiographical snapshot of the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, Fior’s home.
About the Author
Manuele Fior was born in Cesena (Italy) in 1975 and currently lives in Venice. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Le Monde, and La Republica.
Jamie Richards is an Italian-to-English translator from Southern California currently based in Milan, Italy. She holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Oregon and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa.
Praise For…
Italian comics master Manuele Fior plays with form and style in the enormously entertaining Blackbird Days. ... All the stories in the collection feature Fior’s stylistic flourishes: humor, comfort, elegance, wit, and vitality.
— The A.V. Club
Fior is an incredible craftsman, and the handsome art in this volume makes it worthy of attention. — Publishers Weekly
Blackbird Days is at the very least a showcase for Fior’s incredible artistic and authorial versatility, but at its best is something altogether more.
— Daily Grindhouse
Sometimes, shorter works by such creators of accomplished longer pieces like are not as satisfying, but Fior does a beautiful, haunting job at allowing the same richness to lurk within these stories that are slight only in page count. — The Beat
