Yoshihiro Tatsumi has been called "the grandfather of Japanese alternative comics" and has influenced generations of cartoonists around the world. Now the visionary creator of The Push Man and Good-Bye has turned his incisive, unflinching gaze upon himself.
A Drifting Life is Tatsumi's most ambitious, personal, and heart-felt work. A monumental memoir eleven years in the making, beginning with his experiences as a child in Osaka, growing up as part of a country burdened by the shadows of World War II. Spanning fifteen years from August 1945 to June 1960, Tatsumi's stand-in protagonist, Hiroshi, faces his father's financial burdens and his parents' failing marriage, his jealous brother's deteriorating health, and the innumerable pitfalls that await him in the competitive manga market of mid-twentieth-century Japan. Using his life-long obsession with comics as a framework, Tatsumi weaves a complex story that encompasses family dynamics, Japanese culture and history, first love, the intricacies of the manga industry, and most importantly, what it means to be an artist.
As with his short-story collection, A Drifting Life is designed by Adrian Tomine.
840 page black and white paperback Drawn & Quarterly, 2015
