Fünftausend Kilometer in der Sekunde

Manuele Fior’s Fünftausend Kilometer in der Sekunde is a quietly monumental graphic novel, first published in 2011 by avant-verlag, that traces the fragile arc of a long-distance relationship across decades. Written by Fior and Maya della Pietra, with Fior also providing the luminous, watercolor-like art, the story follows its characters from a youthful summer in Egypt through the slow, inevitable drift of time. Its emotional precision and innovative use of color to mark emotional distance made it a defining work of European literary comics in the 2010s.