20 Km/H

A slow-motion drive-by view of a collapsing universe meant to sit in the palm of your hand. How fast can you go in a buggy drawn by the flap of a butterfly's wings? How do you measure the speed of waking from a dream? Such abstract inquiries into the unrelenting absurdity of contemporary life make up this omnibus of meditative vignettes from one of mainland China's most prolific and recognizable--yet anonymous--new underground cartoonists of the current generation. Every story in 20 km/h toes the line between pun and poetry, and lands somewhere just short of a zen koan: Come back to it as often as you like, it will never read quite the same way twice. A nondescript figure awakes from an assembly line of identically fashioned companions and boards a rowboat destined for the unknown. A man holds the key to sleep in his hand and uses it to disappear into his mattress. The moon is plucked from the sky and fed into a vending machine for a can of soda. Woshibai's minimalist renderings are a startlingly delightful cocktail of existential dread and silent slapstick that arrest the mind's eye with equal parts humor and grace.