“ Kuper’s art is, page after page, astonishing.” - Jules Feiffer
“ Kuper’s art is, page after page, astonishing.” - Jules Feiffer
“With a monarch butterfly serving in the role of all-seeing observer flying poetically above it all, the constantly remarkable Peter Kuper details the travels and travails of a creative New York couple who move to Oaxaca to find inspiration and revitalize their lives. Kuper’s art is, page after page, astonishing.”
- Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist
“Maybe you’ve never been to Oaxaca, Mexico before, or maybe you know it like the back of your hand - either way, Peter Kuper’s beautiful, immersive graphic novel is the next best thing to being there. Gorgeous art, high stakes themes and a plot with a surprising twist combine to transform this pivotal moment in the lives of a culture, a country, a couple, and a butterfly into a timely and illuminating journey from north to south and back again.”
- John Vaillant, Author, TheJaguar’sChildren
“The bright, incident-packed panels of Oaxacan life are nicely balanced by lovely sketches of insects and the sparer rendering of the butterfly’s journey, its fragile orange wings warm against blue-grey landscapes.”
- The Guardian
“This magnificent graphic novel by Kuper follows an American couple who decamp for Oaxaca, Mexico, for a sabbatical and creative recharge, only to get far more than they bargained for… It’s a beautiful, epic roman à clef about the importance of seeking the new and questioning the old.”
- PublishersWeekly
Samantha and George are a couple heading towards a sabbatical year in the quaint Mexican town of Oaxaca. For Samantha, it is the opportunity to revisit her past. For George, it is an unsettling step into the unknown. For both of them, it will be a collision course with political and personal events that will alter their paths and the town of Oaxaca forever.
In tandem, the remarkable and arduous journey that a monarch butterfly endures on its annual migration from Canada to Mexico is woven into Ruins. This creates a parallel picture of the challenges of survival in our ever-changing world.
Peter Kuper’s illustrations and comics have appeared in newspapers and magazines around the world. He wrote and illustrated SPY vs. SPY for 26 years for Mad magazine and is a regular contributor to The New Yorker. He has produced over two dozen books including, TheSystem, Diario de Oaxaca, and adaptations of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Franz Kafka’s works, including TheMetamorphosis and Kafkaesque. He has lectured in the US and abroad and is a visiting professor at Harvard University.
