Shaun Tan, The Arrival

Shaun Tan is an Australian illustrator and author born in 1974. He has won a stack of awards for his work, including an Oscar in 2011 for The Lost Thing, a short animated film based on one of his books. I was unaware of him until a copy of The Arrival called to me from the library shelf, captivating me with its gray magic.

The Arrival (2006) is the wordless story of a man who leaves his wife and child and crosses the ocean to seek work in a great city. In one sense it is the classic immigrant tale, with which Tan is familiar, since his father is Chinese.

But the world of The Arrival is passing strange; the city is like New York imagined by a steampunk surrealist.

I thought this worked wonderfully. Besides making the drawings more interesting, the surreal elements remind us of how strange New York or San Fancisco must have been to people from small villages in China or Sicily.

I loved many of the strange details, like the weird little animals, the peculiar food, and the undecipherable writing. That must also be what many immigrants see.

The nameless central character meets other immigrants who tell him their own stories, some of them full of war and terror.

And in the end, things seem to work out.

It is a completely captivating book, and Tan is an amazing artist. I am now going to begin hunting for his other work. His web site hints that it is equally full of wonders.