M.T. Anderson and Eugene Yelchin's THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE

Eugene Yelchin has visited dulemba.com before, for The Haunting of Falcon House and Arcady's Goal, but this is the first time I have the honor of hosting M.T. (Tobin) Anderson! The two have created a revolutionary new illustrated novel, THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE which I have simply flipped over. They are here today to tell us a bit more about it. e: Can you tell us a little about your collaboration, The Assassination of Brangwain Spurge?

TOBIN: This book is a tribute to all of those brave writer-explorers in the ancient world who voyaged into unknown lands and tried to understand the cultures they found there: Marco Polo, Ibn Battuta, Faxian, and Herodotus.

EUGENE: What tribute? This is a spy thriller. Think John Le Carré. Think The Spy Who Came in from the Cold for the younger set. TOBIN: But at its heart, it’s really a tragic meditation on how societies that have been trained to hate each other for generations can actually come to see eye to eye.

EUGENE: A tragedy?
     A laugh-out-loud misadventure of two fools blinded by ideology and propaganda is not a tragedy, sir. It’s a comedy. TOBIN: Sure, Eugene, whatever. Basically, we just wondered why goblins get such a bad rap in Tolkien and his imitators, why they’re always seen as faceless masses who deserve to be slaughtered, and what it’s actually like to live in the barren realm of an oppressive dark lord.

EUGENE: Who’s Tolkien? Never heard of him. I hate fantasy. TOBIN: Is this interview over? I have to get a root canal.

EUGENE: My first root canal was done by a KGB dentist in Siberia without anesthetic. Wait! Anderson! Where are you going? e: Haha! Thanks, guys - I'll tell folks more about your book...

     Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom –from which no elf has returned alive in more than a hundred years. Brangwain’s host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses, blunders, and cultural misunderstandings throw these two bumbling scholars into the middle of an international crisis that may spell death for them–and war for their nations. Witty mixed-media illustrations show Brangwain’s furtive missives back to the elf kingdom, while Werfel’s determinedly unbiased narrative tells an entirely different story. A hilarious and biting social commentary that could only come from the likes of National Book Award winner M. T. Anderson and Newbery Honor winner Eugene Yelchin, this tale is rife with thrilling action and visual humor . . . and a comic disparity that suggests the ultimate victor in a war is not who wins the battles, but who gets to write the history.

THE ASSASSINATION OF BRANGWAIN SPURGE. Text copyright © 2018 by M.T. Anderson. Illustrations copyright © 2018 by Eugene Yelchin. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA.