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 (Click for larger image) 
Niffenegger, Audrey.
THE THREE INCESTUOUS SISTERS: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVEL.
New York City, NY:
Harry N. Abrams,
2005.
Hardcover.
First Edition/First Printing.
176 pages.
As New.
The author's debut illustrated novel. One of the most important artistic and literary events of the year 2005. Published to enormous critical and popular acclaim. The true first. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent printings. A stunningly beautiful production by Audrey Niffenegger and Joseph Regal: Oversize-volume format in wide oblong shape. Pictorial hardcovers with maroon leatherette overboards and white titles on cover and spine, as issued. Art and text by Audrey Niffenegger. Printed on thick glossy stock paper to the very highest standards. Round red sticker pasted on cover. Without DJ, as issued. Niffenegger is a brilliant and accomplished artist first, an imaginative writer second, but the wild success of her breakthrough debut novel, "The Time Traveller's Wife", fixed her in the public mind as a writer. Based on an Artist Book that consisted of 80 handmade color etchings (it took her 14 years to finish them) and self-published by Niffenegger in an edition of 10 copies (museums bought the copies), "The Three Incestuous Sisters" is a shimmering tale told in the form of an eerily beautiful novel-in-pictures. The minimal text is presented opposite the delicately nuanced full-page etching reproductions. They portray the Bronte-like lives of three inseparable, orphaned sisters: "Bettina, the youngest, is a lovely blond; Ophile, the eldest, has blue hair; Clothilde, in the middle, and in a world of her own, is a redhead. The svelte sisters possess extravagantly long hair and tapering, expressive hands; wear clinging, gray, ankle-length dresses; and are as powerfully evocative as dancers in a Martha Graham production. They live harmoniously in a lonely house by the sea until the lighthouse keeper's handsome son, Paris, appears and falls in love with Bettina, who soon becomes pregnant. Clothilde, whose esoteric talents include levitation, communes happily with her nephew while Ophile goes mad with jealousy" (Donna Seaman). Niffenegger's Grimm-ly erotic tale, with its Gothic look, has been compared, very favorably, to the sublime work of Edward Gorey. Still, the brilliant use of iconographic patterns, unusual perspectives, and tensile lines as well as the evocative, sensuous, gossamer atmosphere and sexually explicit scenes (something the deeply closeted homosexual Gorey never ventured) suggest a hypnotic and mesmerizing otherworldliness that is Niffenegger's own. A masterpiece. This copy is prominently and beautifully signed in black pen on the title page by Audrey Niffenegger. This is one of very few signed copies available online and has no flaws, a pristine copy. A scarce signed copy thus. 80 plates. One of the finest living American artist/writers. A flawless copy. . ISBN 0810959275. $75.00 |
