A wordless tale of belonging: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival

Looking over much of my previous work as an illustrator and writer, such as The Rabbits (about colonisation), The Lost Thing (about a creature lost in a strange city) or The Red Tree (a girl wandering through shifting dreamscapes), I realise that I have a recurring interest in notions of ‘belonging’, particularly the finding or losing of it. (Shaun Tan, in an article written for Viewpoint magazine)

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is a beautiful, immersive example of the internationally renowned illustrator’s narratives of belonging. There are no words in this book – just gorgeously rendered photorealist drawings that tell a migrant’s story in an unprecedented way.

The first images of the book usher you into a family’s life: a clock on a mantelpiece, a child’s drawing, a cracked teapot, a portrait of three people smiling. A father, a mother and a young daughter hold hands as they travel through streets heavy with the shadows of monsters; the man steps onto a train, headed for a new country. The Arrival looks like a photo album, but it is also a narrative, exploring a unique story with so much care that it can be universally understood.

Without language, we all find ourselves in a strange land. In The Arrival, there is little that is familiar to anchor us. Tan’s traveller arrives in a city that is half Ellis Island, half Oz: the writing that appears on signs and paperwork is elaborate and undecipherable; people are accompanied by alien creatures perching in baskets or on shoulders. It is unlike any place we have ever dreamed of, yet this man must now try to make it his home.

Slowly, he puzzles out the basics. How can he find work? He is fired from one job, and frightened from another, because he cannot read. What does food look like here? His crude sketch of a bread loaf elicits instead a curly gourd and a crustacean-like plant, but also an invitation to dinner from a man who, it turns out, also came from a dangerous homeland.

Tan’s illustrations resonate with empathy, rendering the many tragic stories here as keenly as he does the joyful ones. In The Arrival, his signature ability to make the strange tender has found another perfect story to tell.

Melbourne Writers Festival is delighted to present Shaun Tan’s The Arrival as a keynote event. Tan’s inventive graphic stories have already migrated from page to screen, with the Oscar-winning film The Lost Thing. Now, The Arrival has been brought to life in music by Sydney composer and musician Ben Walsh. An amazing live ‘sonic-scape’, performed by the multi-instrumental Orkestra of the Underground, accompanies projections of Tan’s exquisite illustrations. Tan will introduce this performance via video.

Shaun Tan’s The Arrival is at 7:30pm on 26 August at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

Tan also appears in conversation with Mike Shuttleworth on 3 September.