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The first two stories were first published in America in Dark Horse Comics' Cheval Noir (in which they published the work European artists like Moebius, Manara, and Bilal). Later, the first three stories were published in the graphic novel format by NBM Publishing, another American garphic publishing house that tries to import, translate, and publish European comics.
"The Tower" is the third book in the series. It tells the story of a man who has been maintaining a section of a huge tower for 30 years. Everyday, he sees that the tower is slowly crumbling. Everyday, he tries to fix things around in his sector. Everyday, he tells himself that the ispector will come tomorrow and fire all of the other tower keepers who don't do their job and let time eat away at the magnificent tower. But deep inside, he feels that there is something wrong with the tower project. So one day, he decides to leave his sector and go to the lower levels of the tower -- to "the base." What he discovers is incredibly shocking to him: the tower project has been abandoned and forgotten. Now he must try to make sense of his confusing situation...
In my opinion, The Tower has the best story of the first three Obscure Cities books. The story touched me on an emotional level form the first few pages. The dialogue is very well written and this is probably why the story is so strong. The Tower is also the most philosophical of the Obscure Cities stories as it asks questions like 'What is the importance of the ambitions of one human generation to the next?' Like all stories in the series, the ending is very open to interpretation and the reader must decide what happened, what will happen, and what the point of the story was. I think this adds to the strength of the stroy.
The art is also, in my opinion, the best in the series. Most of the story is told through delicate black and white drawings. Some of the elements in the story are in color. These parts of the story are quite attractive. Francois Schuiten is said to be one of Europe's master draughtsman and anyone who sees the art of The Tower will have to agree.
I highly recommend this book to everyone! The next book in the series called "Brusel" is going to be published in English this month by NBM. I can't wait!
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Today, you don't have to pay a doorman to get into a restaurant, and floors at Moscow metro are no longer "fit to eat off". However, old ladies in the street will still reproach you for wearing no hat in winter, and your new Russian friends will still make detailed inquiries about your salary and incomes of other "typical" people in the West.
This informal guide to the USSR is very accurate and well-researched and the authors have remarkable attention to every breathtakingly ridiculous detail of life in the State of Workers and Peasants.
If you have never been to the Soviet Union, you will think that some of the things described there are too grotesque to be true.
If you know the Soviet Union well, you will be astonished by the depth of the authors' knowledge; then you will be laughing out loud as, page after page, you recognize one Soviet idiocy after another.
In addition, the authors offer structured explanation of the things you knew only empirically: i.e., brotherly nations are those which embraced socialism; progressive nations are those which have not embraced socialism but are not capitalist either because they are still working their way through feudalism; hard currency is a currency of any nation which is neither brotherly or progressive.
You will read this book in one evening, even if this means reading until 3 a.m. You will then regret that you got through it so quickly.
This book is a rare combination of first-class writing talent, honesty, humour and a subject matter which ought to be handled only by a writer who is capable of not taking even the grimmest issues seriously.
Essentially, the book is a tour guide, but one designed to be read (at least to get the full impact of the humor) after you have been to Russia. I could not count the number of times I found myself saying, "That's exactly right!" or "It happened to me to!".
The humor lies totally in the fact that the authors write in an very subtle, straightforward way that makes the "quirkyness" of many Russian customs and traditions seem side-splittingly funny. For example, you are provided with the step-by-step process for bribing your way past the doorman at a restaurant. Or the description of borshch, the beet soup whose "purple coloring will transfer itself readily to fingers, clothes and subsequent bowel movements." (Probably the only example of bathroom humor in the book). The authors are both British, and this is reflected in the understated style of humor in the book.
Once again, do not miss this book!
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One last note. I worked with some of the best thought-leaders while I was working with two Big-5 consulting firms, and I saw how the old Chinese proverb "To know, but not to do, is not yet to know" was truly accurate. They knew what they knew because of their experience. Because of his dead-on summary of these essentials, I didn't believe that a book of this quality could come from someone who was just a writer and has a few Internet businesses. I found through further research that Marc was formerly a partner at one of the leading web development and operation firms. I think he should include a few more lines in his too-brief bio to explain that. Even without that, the book speaks for itself.