Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family

Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family

"[A] vibrant, poignant book." ―NPR Book Reviews 1914. A teenage romantic heads to the enlistment office when his idyllic life in a Jewish enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is shattered by World War I. 1938. A seven-year-old refugee begins a desperate odyssey through France, struggling to outrun the rapidly expanding Nazi regime and reunite with his family on the other side of the Atlantic. 2015. The creator of a world-famous video game franchise weighs the costs of uprooting his family and moving to France as the cracks in his marriage begin to grow. Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner calls on the voices of his father and grandfather to weave a powerful story about the enduring challenge of holding a family together in the face of an ever-changing world. "The famed video-game designer (Prince of Persia) pivots to personal history in this ambitious but intimate graphic novel. In it, he elegantly interweaves themes of memory and exile with family lore from three generations: a grandfather who fought in World War I; a father who fled Nazi persecution; and his own path as a globe-trotting, game-creating polymath." -- The New York Times (8 New Books We Recommend This Week) "A meditation on the meaning of family, a theory and practice of video-game design, a haunting exploration of one man's patrimony — how can a single graphic novel contain so many things, and do them all so beautifully? Jordan Mechner's Replay is a wise, deeply moving book that I anticipate revisiting, and rereading, many times." —Tom Bissell, author of Extra Lives and co-author of The Disaster Artist "Mechner delivers a grand tale of the 20th century on the themes of uprooting and exile. He also offers a fascinating look at the evolution of video games, from the days when a kid could code a worldwide hit in his bedroom, to today's industry when a game mobilizes a team of hundreds of people. Drawing his first comic book (with talent), Jordan Mechner continues to make his mark on the history of the graphic arts, and surprises us with the ambition of a work as universal as the family narratives of Marjane Satrapi or Riad Sattouf." —Jean-Samuel Kriegk, dBD " Replay takes us on a journey through a century of lives, love and hate, dreams and torments, creation and destruction, via Jordan Mechner's epic family story in his graphic novel debut. A first outing that reveals the hand of a master... Fascinating from start to finish, Replay is also an opportunity to follow the ups and downs of the behind-the-scenes creation of a classic video game like Prince of Persia , all executed with a drawing style of great finesse. Magnificent!" —Eric Guillaud, FranceInfo "Vibrant, poignant... Short but powerful scenes of resilience, loss, and intergenerational connectedness are at the heart of Jordan Mechner's new nonfiction graphic book Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family . Though Replay's many twists and turns underscore the pervasive impact of the past, including painful traumas and unbearable losses, the emphasis is ultimately on the connectedness that remains in the present." --NPR Creating Replay has been an adventure different from anything I've done before. It unites in a new way three crafts and lifelong passions that have animated my work: storytelling, visual art, and history. I wrote and drew every page. Replay is a graphic novel memoir of three generations. It interweaves my father's childhood odyssey as a Jewish refugee in Nazi-occupied France; my grandfather's experience as a teenage soldier on the Russian front in World War I; and my own youth as a videogame-obsessed American kid, from a 1978 Apple II through four decades in the fast-evolving game industry. Prince of Persia  and the other games, books, and films I've spent my career making were born out of those formative events. If you're a fan of graphic novels or video games, or are interested in family stories and the upheavals of the 20th century — or both — I hope Replay will speak to you and resonate on multiple levels. It's the great origin story I've spent my life preparing to tell. I can't wait for you to discover it. Jordan Mechner is an author, graphic novelist, game designer, and screenwriter. He created the video game Prince of Persia in 1989, rebooted it with Ubisoft in 2003, and wrote the first screenplay for Disney’s 2010 film adaptation, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time . His other games include Karateka and The Last Express . In 2017, he received the Pioneer Award from the International Game Developers Association. Jordan’s graphic novels as writer include the New York Times bestseller Templar (from First Second, with LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland), Monte Cristo (Mario Alberti), and Liberty (Etienne LeRoux). Replay is his first book as writer/artist.