A Drifting Life #[nn]

Yoshihiro Tatsumi's A Drifting Life is a sweeping autobiographical graphic novel from Drawn & Quarterly, and its cover sets the tone beautifully — a lone figure hunched over a page of manga artwork, pen in hand, surrounded by floating orbs drifting through a dark, contemplative space. The stark black-and-white illustration, rendered entirely by Tatsumi himself, captures the solitary devotion of an artist absorbed in his craft. With translation work by Adrian Tomine and the story centered on "The Birth of Manga," this 2009 volume is an intimate, unhurried portrait of a life shaped by drawing.