Priser Alain Alain itibaren Emile, Nijerya itibaren Emile, Nijerya

Capitalization is an important part of this next sentence: I think opium is a Romantic drug. The fact that this novel proclaims to be the first of its genre (decades after Edgar Allen Poe) is detrimental to its reputation. Any why didn't we read The Woman in White instead?

I expected much more from this book but was instead a tad disappointed. From dust jacket: "Alex Dingwall-Main, a distinguished landscape architect working in Provence, is accustomed to odd garden requests from his demanding clients. But when a rich and eccentric Frenchman asks him to find the oldest olive tree in the world to grace his exquisite courtyard in southern France, the author finds himself on an improbable adventure spanning the Mediterranean coast of Europe. In this quixotic, lyrical, and evocative odyssey, we encounter millennia-old olive groves, unscrupulous dealers, mafioso-like skullduggery in the plant world, secret festivals, divided families, hidden villages, farcical disasters, and miracles in holy places. Alex finally locates a three-thousand-year-old olive tree miraculously shaped like an angel, but he is stymied when the farmer tells him he will not sell him the tree unless he buys the two-thousand-acre farm that surrounds it...not to mention the entire nearby village, for the local people believe a drop of rain that has touched the leaves of the Angel Olive will cure anything, from snakebite to the common cold."

I originally read this in the fall of 2002.

The perfect marriage of content and form, this graphic novel is unique and dazzling. It's not often that I finish a book and immdiately want to read it again but this was one of those occasions. The words and artwork are deftly crafted separately and subtly fused together. It forced my conscious and subconsious to work together and the results are lingering, haunting continually tantatilzing. Poignant, personal and profound, I'm so glad I own this book so I can pick it up and experience it again and again. A shining example of the graphic novel as literature. I don't know how this story could be told as effectively any other way.

This is based on a real book, and poses the premise on the people who've touched or owned it throughout its history. Intriguing.