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Jiro Taniguchi's Guardians of the Louvre Manga Listed for Spring 2016

North American graphic novel publisher NBM Publishing is listing an English release of the manga Guardians of the Louvre (Les Gardiens du Louvre) by Jiro Taniguchi (The Summit of the Gods, The Walking Man). The 136-page full color hardcover book will retail for US$24.99, or as an e-book for US$9.99. NBM Publishing lists an April 2016 release window, though Amazon lists a May 1 release date.

NBM Publishing describes the story:

A famous manga artist provides the latest entry in the Louvre collection of graphic novels. After a group trip to Europe, a Japanese designer stops in Paris alone, intent on visiting the museums of the capital. But, bedridden in his hotel room with fever, he faces the Absolute Solitude of one suffering in a foreign land, deprived of any immediate or familiar recourse. When the fever breaks somewhat, he sets out on his visit and promptly gets lost in the crowded halls of the Louvre. Very soon, he discovers many unsuspected facets to this world in a museum, meeting artists and their works from various periods, in a journey oscillating between feverish hallucination and reality, finishing at the crossroads between human and personal history.

With this inner journey, Jiro Taniguchi invites us on a temporal and artistic trip to discover a sense of place under the leadership of some tutelary figures that appear to him, familiar or unknown ... the guardians of the Louvre.

NBM Publishing has also offered other graphic novels from the Louvre art museum's comics line in English. Most other comics in the line are by French artists, though Hirohiko Araki (JoJo's Bizarre Adventure) contributed Rohan at the Louvre. NBM Publishing released Rohan at the Louvre in 2012.

Taniguchi's works were nominated for an Ignatz Award in 2010 and several Eisner Awards in 2007-2010. Taniguchi himself was knighted in France in 2011.

[Via Brian Ruh]