Boston Book Festival 2018

It’s no exaggeration to say that the publication of the final volume in Jason Lutes’s epic graphic novel Berlin is one of the landmark publishing events of this year. Certainly this impressively researched saga about the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism can be considered Lutes’s masterwork, having been published over the course of the last twenty years and garnering many award nominations along the way. Lutes’s intricately, architecturally illustrated novel brings to life the city of Berlin as well as its inhabitants, whose stories remain both historically fascinating and urgently relevant. Novelist Alexander Chee has called Berlin “a newly necessary book,” and certainly Lutes could not have foretold when he began drawing the comic in 1996 just how timely this historical novel would become. Following Lutes’s presentation of his work, he’ll be interviewed by N.C. Christopher Couch of UMass Amherst, author of numerous books on graphic novels and curator of exhibits on comic art. Come celebrate this remarkable achievement in the art form.