Cirrus@Austlit

'You know from the very first glance, from the very first touch, that a book created by Shaun Tan, such as Tales from the Inner City, is going to disturb you. It is going to send you spiraling from your so-called real world into a world in which you will be speechless and wordless because his marvelously peculiar drawings and paintings are so provocative and alienating. You feel as though you have been transported to Kafka’s novella Metamorphosis (1915), and, like Gregor Samsa, you awake and are incapable of knowing what has transpired and caused the world to turn upside down. The more you try to be rational, the more the world around you appears to be weird and irrational.' (Introduction)