Blutch’s Peplum, a graphic novel, is out this month from New York Review Comics. A phantasmagoric take on the Satyricon, it was originally serialized in the French magazine À suivrein 1996; this is its first appearance in English. In his new introduction, Blutch’s translator, Edward Gauvin, writes, “Taking as its title the European term for the sword-and-sandal cinematic subgenre, Peplumoffers a decidedly different take on the toga epic—one of aporia and ambiguity, a fractured tale of antiquity in all its alien majesty.”

Translated from the French by Edward Gauvin. Reprinted with permission of New York Review Comics. 

Blutch (Christian Hincker) is an award-winning, highly influential French cartoonist. He has published almost two dozen books since his 1988 comic debut in the legendary avant-garde magazine Fluide glacial, includingMitchum,Le petit Christian, andSo Long, Silver Screen, his only previous book to be published in English. His illustrations appear inLes inrockuptibles, Libération, andThe New Yorker.