Brodecks Bericht

In impressively dark, dense images, Manu Larcenet tells the story of Brodeck, a man forced to justify the murder of a stranger at the hands of villagers who live in extreme poverty and freezing conditions. Gradually, all the horrors and misdeeds that befell the villagers or in which they participated come to light. With an intensity that never lets up for its 300-plus pages, the work tells of guilt and shared guilt, of fear and torment, and of people’s inability to own up to their actions. Often going for pages without using a single word, the characters allow us to read every emotion and every interaction from their powerfully haunting faces. We look into the abyss of the human soul, into a gloom as deep and as dark as the black of Larcenet’s drawings. 

Brodecks Bericht is a great, sombre masterpiece that uses striking images to tell an unimaginably brutal tale about the human species – one that weighs heavily on you long after you have put the book down.