WHERE LIFE BALANCES ART

THERE is something disconcertingly familiar about Shaun Tan's calm, open face as he looks up to greet the next autograph hunter in a queue snaking out the bookshop's door and around the corner.

It's a mixed crowd here at a writers festival in homage to a book without words.

Tan smiles and opens the book handed to him, stamps and signs it twice, and looks up again. Finally it dawns that, of course, it's Tan's face that appears on the protagonist of his graphic novel The Arrival.

There it is in frame after frame of the more than 800 images in this sumptuous 120-page story tracing the journey of migration in a fantastic world.

I wrote about The Arrival, an amazing and haunting work, back in October last year shortly after I started Beattie's Book Blog and of course Shaun Tan was a star attraction at the recent Storylines Festival.

This story is from The Australian and is well worth a read.