A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, NPR
ONE OF THE WASHINGTON POST’S BEST GRAPHIC NOVELS OF 2025
“Anders Nilsen has built a sprawling, rich and textured world with complex, enigmatic characters. At the heart of the book is a retelling of the Greek myth of Prometheus, but it is the contemporary storyline of the brave, precocious Astrid and her chicken sidekick Hermaea that kept me turning the pages. The page design and colors are stunning, and each panel features the meticulous line work some might expect from Nilsen. Tongues is a canonical work by a comic artist with a distinctive vision.”
—Nicolette Khan, NPR, “Books We Love 2025”
“Nilsen’s storytelling is enticingly enigmatic, but the real draw of this book is his mastery of the medium’s formal mechanics. Some pages are made up of tight hexagonal grids of panels that interlock like honeycombs, while others sprawl out into lush splashes of vegetation. Brainy and action-packed, this is a book that is sure to inspire cultish fascination.”
—The Washington Post, “The Best Graphic Novels of 2025”
“Every gorgeous, puzzle-like page is a masterpiece.”
— Publishers Weekly
“Tongues is an extraordinary reinvention of some of our oldest stories. Nilsen brings these old gods to an electrifying new life, and gives us a new sense of humanity as well, drilling into what we forgot to be afraid of and why we would have made ourselves forget. And the art of comics is reinvented as well in the process. It’s as if to tell this story, Nilsen had to remake everything he knew.”
—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“Superb graphic art meets an exceedingly odd tale, and to wonderful ends.”
—Kirkus, starred review
“With exhilarating imagination, Nilsen charges headlong at big themes of responsibility, fate, mortality, transcendence, and the natural order. The results are stunning.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Tongues is absolutely astonishing. A psychedelic collision between our most degraded contemporary realities and some of the oldest mythologies known to our species, written with a granular insight into both, drawn with beautiful savagery in a style that at times recalls Moebius but is utterly Nilsen’s own. Some passages made me cry, and I didn’t want the story to end. This book feels momentous.”
—Leela Corman, author of Victory Parade
“#$&@ing amazing!”
—Charles Burns, author of Black Hole
“A genuinely mind-blowing achievement. I think Tongues is a landmark book not only in the history of the graphic novel, but in the history of mythic storytelling. A dazzlingly innovative feat which surprises and delights on every page, across the epic whole and in every strange detail. My favorite comic by a living artist.”
—Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers
“Mind-bendingly good. It’s up there with Maus, Fun Home, Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan.”
—Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
“Nilsen’s use of frequently silent panels, expansive landscapes, and deliberate pacing evokes a quiet intensity that feels both timeless and contemporary…A compellingly enigmatic adventure story exploring the role of personal and cultural mythology in today’s fraught historical moment.”
—Library Journal
“An absolute page-turner that will keep you up late into the night…Tongues is flat-out stunning work. It elevates the medium on every page, and the audacious formal qualities are on full display on every connected page and interlocking panel.”
—The Comics Journal
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