SECRET LIFE

SECRET LIFE THEO ELLSWORTH, JEFF VANDERMEER

An uncanny and eye-opening journey into a mysterious building, adapted from a short story by Jeff VanderMeer In Secret Life, Theo Ellsworth uses a deep-layered style to interpret Nebula award-winning author Jeff VanderMeer’s short story. What emerges is a mind-bending narrative that defamiliarizes the mundanity of office work via the arcane rituals of The Building, the massive structure at the center of this book that is home to hundreds of employees who work around the clock. Several factions vie for dominance in the workplace. A woman plants a seed of insurgency that quickly permeates every corner of the building. A mischief of mice learns to speak English. Something eerie happens once a month on the fifth floor. Second floor personnel develop their own tongue, incomprehensible to all other occupants. Custodians, too, form a cult around the head of their department. Such peculiarities are proof positive that Ellsworth’s adaptation is a timely one, bringing VanderMeer’s perspective into a present where the boundaries around what constitutes an office have blurred. Dubbed by The New Yorker as the King of Weird Fiction, VanderMeer meets a perfect visual counterpart in Ellsworth who breathes life into the vine that eventually forces its way center stage. Secret Life observes the sinister individualism of bureaucratic settings with deft insight, contrasting it with an unconcerned natural world. Ellsworth's hypnotic visuals uncover a life not-so-secret after all, one that is uncannily similar to our own.

THEO ELLSWORTH, JEFF VANDERMEER

Theo Ellsworth is a self-taught artist living in Montana. His previously published comics include Capacity, The Understanding Monster, Sleeper Car, and An Exorcism. The New York Times once called his work "imagination at firehose intensity." He has been the recipient of the Lynd Ward Honor Book Prize and an Artist Innovation Award. He loves creative collaboration, cooking, and making family folk art with his kids. He is constantly making invisible performance art in his head that no one will ever see. Jeff VanderMeer is the New York Times–bestselling author of The Southern Reach Trilogy, the first volume of which, Annihilation, won the Nebula Award and the Shirley Jackson Award for best novel and was adapted into a movie by Alex Garland. His novels set in the Borne universe are being adapted for TV by AMC, and Netflix has optioned his next novel, Hummingbird Salamander, for film. Called “the weird Thoreau” by The New Yorker, VanderMeer speaks and writes frequently about issues relating to climate change as well as urban rewilding. He lives in Tallahassee, Florida, on the edge of a ravine, with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, and their cat, Neo.