With nothing more than a suitcase and a handful of currency, the immigrant must find a place to live, food to eat and some kind of gainful employment. He eventually finds himself in a bewildering city of foreign customs, peculiar animals, curious floating objects and indecipherable languages.

A man leaves his wife and child in an impoverished town, seeking better prospects in an unknown country on the other side of a vast ocean. The Arrival is a migrant story told as a series of wordless images that might seem to come from a long forgotten time. Tan summarizes The Arrival on his official site: Talking Squid’s review by Russell B.The Graphic Novel Book Club at the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh Woods Run branch will discuss two books on the immigrant experience on June 29: Shaun Tan's Arrival and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. I also came across some photos at Flickr of a Shaun Tan mural at the Subiaco Library in Perth. The Lost Thing, another Tan book that was made into puppet theatre by Jigsaw Theatre Company here in Canberra a few years ago, and for which I made puppets, has been touring since, and is due to have a season in Melbourne this November at the Arts Centre. ‘Through a series of connecting images, it tells the story of an anonymous migrant leaving some unfortunateĬircumstances in his home country, crossing an ocean to a strange new city, and learning how to live here.’

Silent graphic novel, arranged and presented rather like a photo album, which can be interpreted rather like a silent film. It looks wonderful – a 128 page book of illustrations without words, a ‘The absence of words not only makes the story perfect for puppetry but emphasizes the isolation that is experienced by many people arriving in a new place.’Īlthough The Arrival book doesn’t come out until October, there is an online preview, in which you can see some of the pages, and read Shaun’s detailed description. The production, which The Australian gives a rave review, uses digital animation, puppetry and acting, and is visual theatre: Following on from yesterday’s post about the puppet-based theatre adaptation of Shaun Tan’s picture book, The Red Tree, today I discovered that Spare Parts Puppet Theatre’s adaptation of Shaun’s new book, The Arrival, had just finished it’s season in Perth.

Shaun tan interview the arrival