Notes on a Thesis
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £8.99
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- £8.99
Publisher Description
‘This is a book for anyone who has ever laboured under a deadline, battled a stubborn pig of a boss, or half drowned beneath a wave of bureaucracy and paperwork. Put off what you intended to do today and go out and buy it, right now.’
Rachel Cooke, Observer
An Observer Book of the Year
Shortlisted for the TA First Translation Prize 2017
When Jeanne is accepted on to a PhD course, she is over the moon, brimming with excitement and grand plans – but is the world ready for her masterful analysis of labyrinth motifs in Kafka’s The Trial?
At first Jeanne throws herself into research with great enthusiasm, but as time goes by, it becomes clear that things aren’t quite going according to plan.
Notes on a Thesis is a reminder of the strangeness of academia, of every awful essay, every disastrous exam, and every insanity-inducing dissertation. If you’ve ever stared gloomily at a blank page, battled with office administrators or driven yourself (and everyone you know) mad by droning on about your work, then Notes on a Thesis will make you laugh (or cry) in recognition.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jeanne, a literature-loving Parisian, ditches the drudgery of teaching high school to pursue a Ph.D. on Kafka in this delightfully expressive graphic novel (originally serialized as a webcomic) laced with dark, self-deprecating humor. The studious heroine enthusiastically dives into The Trial, certain she'll finish her thesis in an ambitious three years, but winds up in a Kafkalike quagmire herself, battling brain-numbing bureaucracy and self-doubting dead-ends. Rivi re's languid linework transforms Jeanne's daily grind into spot-on visual metaphors: the undergrad literature students she's saddled with teaching initially seem to be a class of fearsome tigers, but turn out to be simply mewling kittens, and at times Jeanne sees herself as a slobbery cocker spaniel desperate for a treat (or merely guidance) from her long-suffering advisor. As Jeanne spirals (her writing goes nowhere, the college stiffs her on a paycheck, her family thinks she's wasting her life), she must muster the confidence to find a new direction. What could be a rambling plunge into misery instead unfolds as a truthful, witty tale, relatable whether readers are Ph.D., ABD, or neither.
