There are few books of which it can be said they're worth buying for the art alone. Zao Dao's Cuisine Chinoise is one of them. The graphic novel is packed with "tales of food and life" but with its compelling combination of lush painted pages and unsettling, fable-like storytelling, it's the eyes and brain which get the true feast here.
Cuisine Chinoise is the first work to appear in translation by Zao Dao, a rising star of the Chinese arts and comics scene who grew up in rural China but whose striking web comics propelled her to national attention by her early 20s. From there she stormed the European comics world, gaining a solid international fan base.
At long last, now English readers can sample her prodigal talent. Cuisine Chinoise is a stunning English-language debut. The stylized full-colour ink and watercolour illustrations that fill each page are mesmerizing, and the art alone makes the book worth every moment spent on it.
Each panel is literally a feast for the eyes; each page a multi-course meal, each image worth savouring slowly and appreciatively before moving on to the next. It's rooted in Chinese art styles, but with an experimental avant-garde twist. Classic images are stylized in innovative and gorgeous ways and deposited into the narrative in creative fashion. One also detects influences of manga and bande-dessinée.
But Dao has crafted a unique style all her own: packed with dense, breathtaking scale yet expressed in seemingly casual brushstroke. The style is audacious, proud, compelling the reader to take it seriously as something more than just comics. Yet the narrative in turn renders its illustrated pages more alive, more fluid and provocative than art on canvas.