Diversion

Bernardo P. Carvalho & Ana Pessoa

It’s summer. His parents are away on holidays. His friends too. His girlfriend asked him for a break.
Miguel has the whole house for himself. He watches TV, plays videogames, reads his drivers’ manual. It seems like the world is suspended in this Summer heat.

“My only wish is that nothing will happen; that everything remains as it is: the planet standing still with its gravitational law, its traffic rules.”

Where will this detour lead to? Riding along their usual track of great quality, the authors Ana Pessoa and Bernardo P. Carvalho have collaborated for the first time on this graphic novel.

Recommended for readers age 14 and up.

Press voices

“In Diversion we’re presented with the issue of finitude and how to find one’s way on this short journey on Earth, anticipating the future in a daily battle with all that is banal and routine, in a constant search for identity and with the objective of achieving something – quite what we don’t yet know, but which is there nonetheless.” Pedro Miguel Silva, Deus Me Livro

“A unique book which proposes a pact with the reader: to enter the suspended life of an adolescent, to get up close to their frustrations and motivations. Located in an era which isn’t quite ours but in which the future is projected in the drawings’ silence, bathed in the intensity of the city’s colours.” José Marmeleira, Público newspaper

“A book that will win the hearts of young readers, who will identify with the protagonist; but which will also win over adults, for the glimpse that it offers them of what goes on in the mind (and life) of an adolescent these days.” Rita Pimenta, Público newspaper

“The authors are not cartoon specialists and that’s no bad thing: Ana is a writer with a great skill for dialogue and short sentences, along with an openness of spirit and understanding of how drawings are also a form of writing; Bernardo is a quick and virtuoso artist with an unusual grasp of a book’s visual narrative. Together they’ve produced a work which treads happily between the most familiar of canons (…), with a rare balance between words and pictures – it’s neither a visual narrative with subtitles, nor a thread of text with explanatory drawings.” António Jorge Gonçalves

“Ana Pessoa’s literary universe has been centred on adolescence, with texts which are deeply sensitive to the emotional roller-coaster typical of such ages. Bernardo P. Carvalho has an extensive body of work where the image illustrates, narrates, creates a whole universe. The coming together of these two figures to produce a graphic novel results in a unique combination of voices. (…) An extraordinary book, for which age ranges and other such labels are unnecessary.” Sara Figueiredo Costa, Expresso newspaper

Books by Ana Pessoa