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Tongues, Volume 1

Part of Pantheon Graphic Library

Author Anders Nilsen
Hardcover
$35.00 US
Knopf | Pantheon
8"W x 10-7/8"H
On sale Mar 11, 2025 | 368 Pages | 9781524747206
Grades 9-12 + AP/IB
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A fascinating graphic novel retelling of Prometheus from one of the very best artists working today.

Set in a version of modern Central Asia, Tongues is a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus. It follows the captive god’s friendship with the eagle who carries out his daily sentence of torture and chronicles his pursuit of revenge on the god that has imprisoned him.
    Prometheus’s story is entwined with that of an East African orphan on an errand of murder, and a young man with a teddy bear strapped to his back, wandering aimlessly into catastrophe (a character readers may recognize from Nilsen’s Dogs and Water). The story is set against the backdrop of tensions between rival groups in an oil-rich wilderness.
    Created by the three-time Igantz award-winning artist Anders Nilsen, Tongues is both an adventure story and a meditation on human nature in our present fraught, historical moment.
Anders Nilsen is a member of the Chicago-based art collective The Holy Consumption. His best-known work includes Dogs and Water and the Big Questions series. View titles by Anders Nilsen
"Tongues is an extraordinary reinvention of some of our oldest stories. Nilsen brings these old gods to an electrifying new life, and gives us a new sense of humanity as well, drilling into what we forgot to be afraid of and why we would have made ourselves forget. And the art of comics is reinvented as well in the process. It's as if to tell this story, Nilsen had to remake everything he knew."
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Tongues is absolutely astonishing. A psychedelic collision between our most degraded contemporary realities and some of the oldest mythologies known to our species, written with a granular insight into both, drawn with beautiful savagery in a style that at times recalls Moebius but is utterly Nilsen's own. Some passages made me cry, and I didn't want the story to end. This book feels momentous.”
—Leela Corman, author of Victory Parade

“#$&@ing awesome!”
—Charles Burns, author of Black Hole

"A genuinely mind-blowing achievement. I think Tongues is a landmark book not only in the history of the graphic novel, but in the history of mythic storytelling. A dazzlingly innovative feat which surprises and delights on every page, across the epic whole and in every strange detail. My favorite comic by a living artist."
—Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers

“Mind-bendingly good. It’s up there with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan.” 
—Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

About

A fascinating graphic novel retelling of Prometheus from one of the very best artists working today.

Set in a version of modern Central Asia, Tongues is a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus. It follows the captive god’s friendship with the eagle who carries out his daily sentence of torture and chronicles his pursuit of revenge on the god that has imprisoned him.
    Prometheus’s story is entwined with that of an East African orphan on an errand of murder, and a young man with a teddy bear strapped to his back, wandering aimlessly into catastrophe (a character readers may recognize from Nilsen’s Dogs and Water). The story is set against the backdrop of tensions between rival groups in an oil-rich wilderness.
    Created by the three-time Igantz award-winning artist Anders Nilsen, Tongues is both an adventure story and a meditation on human nature in our present fraught, historical moment.

Author

Anders Nilsen is a member of the Chicago-based art collective The Holy Consumption. His best-known work includes Dogs and Water and the Big Questions series. View titles by Anders Nilsen

Praise

"Tongues is an extraordinary reinvention of some of our oldest stories. Nilsen brings these old gods to an electrifying new life, and gives us a new sense of humanity as well, drilling into what we forgot to be afraid of and why we would have made ourselves forget. And the art of comics is reinvented as well in the process. It's as if to tell this story, Nilsen had to remake everything he knew."
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Tongues is absolutely astonishing. A psychedelic collision between our most degraded contemporary realities and some of the oldest mythologies known to our species, written with a granular insight into both, drawn with beautiful savagery in a style that at times recalls Moebius but is utterly Nilsen's own. Some passages made me cry, and I didn't want the story to end. This book feels momentous.”
—Leela Corman, author of Victory Parade

“#$&@ing awesome!”
—Charles Burns, author of Black Hole

"A genuinely mind-blowing achievement. I think Tongues is a landmark book not only in the history of the graphic novel, but in the history of mythic storytelling. A dazzlingly innovative feat which surprises and delights on every page, across the epic whole and in every strange detail. My favorite comic by a living artist."
—Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers

“Mind-bendingly good. It’s up there with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan.” 
—Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

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