Asterios Polyp Winner of the Le Fauve d' Angoulême, Prix spécial du jury 2011

"Mazzucchelli manages to combine breathless formal experimentation and read feeling into a story where every line, color choice, and panel arrangement builds toward a cohesive whole, lending an air of epic proportions to what would otherwise be a simple tale." -Library Journal

"This is an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel...David Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of." -Globe and Mail

"This brazenly original and complex work is easily one of the year's best novels, graphic or otherwise...Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant." -San Jose Mercury News

"David Mazzucchelli's boldly ambitious, boundary-pushing graphic novel is remarkable for the way it synthesizes word and image to craft a new kind of storytelling, and for how it makes that synthesis seem so intuitive as to render it invisible...Asterios Polyp is a fast, fun read, but it's also a work that has been carefully wrought to take optimum advantage of comics' hybrid nature - it's a tale that could only be told on the knife-edge where text and art come seamlessly together." -NPR's The Five Best Books to Share with Your Friends

"As ever, Mazzucchelli keeps both the visual and storytelling fireworks coming...This is a work that demands to be read, re-read, analyzed, and discussed."-Comics Bulletin

"Formally daring yet stylistically self-assured, Asterios Polyp is a bona fide masterpiece and the early frontrunner for best graphic novel of the year...It's the presentation- the use of narrative symbolism, color and visual metaphor-that truly sets the book apart. Much like he did with Year One over 20 years ago, Mazzucchelli has once again raised the bar for his entire artform." -Chicago Sun Times

"This is a comic for artists, and it plays with space and color in ways that maybe only artists will understand, but it is a story for everyone, and Asterios Polyp is easily among the best graphic novels ever made. Go read it, and read it twice." -Providence City Paper

"Mazzucchelli experiments with numerous art styles and pushes the envelope with challenging digressions into philosophy, religion and mortality throughout Polyp's tale. The engrossing effort culminates with a bombshell that will leave readers reeling." -Toronto Star

"In Asterios Polyp -- the best of the summer's new releases -- Mazzucchelli employs spotlights, coloring schemes, knitting, Aristophanes, an identical twin who died at birth and the wide array of secretions from a woman's body to lead us into the self-centered world of the title character even as the center implodes.... Asterios Polyp is a primer for both the fervent possibilities and the rich rewards of the graphic novel."-Portland Oregonian

"Now, after a decade-and-a-half, he has re-re-emerged with Asterios Polyp, an epic, emotionally rich, symbol-laden work that promises to redefine the graphic novel. Published by Pantheon Books (home to master-class cartoonists such as Art Spiegelman, Chris Ware and Dan Clowes), Asterios Polyp is Mazzucchelli's first graphic novel. It is also happens to be his masterpiece, the culmination of 25 years of promise....Mazzucchelli has made a beautiful, elaborate construction that coyly juggles style and content in a way few cartoonists are capable of."-Globe and Mail (Canada)

"The beauty of Asterios Polyp is that its core tenet, the need to pay attention to life as it happens, is so well reflected in the book itself-in its lush paper tone and rough-hewn, elegant design-and in the way all the formal devices serve the story. As such, it rewards attention and even devotion." -Bookforum

"The more you study Polyp, the more there is to discover. This is a book that stands with works by Updike, Roth, and other giants of American literature. It is undoubtedly one of the best novels of the year." -The Stranger

"Asterios Polyp is a perfect marriage of words an