Manuele Fior – författare

The Interview is the second graphic novel by Manuele Fior, author of the critically acclaimed and international award-winning debut 5,000 KM per Second. Set in Italy in 2048, it follows Raniero, a fifty-something psychologist in a failing marriage. In the sky, strange bright triangles appear, bearing mysterious messages from an extra-terrestrial civilisation. Dora, his young patient, is part of the New Convention, a movement of young people preaching free love and alternative models to coupling and family.

Teresa's life has always been a comfortable straight line, with every goal set for herself achieved right on schedule. It comes as little surprise when she wins a prestigious scholarship to help mount an exhibition in Berlin celebrating the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. A straight line, on the other hand, is totally absent from the personal geometry of Ruben, a fellow young Italian who never finished his art studies and views Berlin as his personal playground. When Teresa and Ruben meet, fate will forever change the trajectory of their existence. Hypericum follows in parallel Carter's discovery in Egypt and Teresa and Ruben's passionate yet tormented love affair, set in 1990s Berlin. Between Egypt and Berlin, the two eras confront and intertwine in a story that has at its centre the hypericum, or St. John's wort, a plant with unusual properties... This sublimely romantic journey into Egyptian grandeur, the vibrations of youth, and the anxieties of the heart is a masterpiece of graphic fiction by one of the world's great contemporary graphic novelists, about how the strongest bonds are created by the passage of time.

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 Bocklin 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.