(In a sense) Lost and Found

She search’s around her room, her town and apparently her soul to find it – but alas, to no avail.

The pages are illustrated in a muted palette of browns and grey, and are shrouded in darkness and show – both literally and metaphorically- as we see the realisation of innocence as a physical object.

The strange language in the dialogue adds to the sense of surreal as we go on a journey that feels at once expansive and claustrophobic. The world F Presence is trying to navigate is a world in which innocence – as something tangible – can be abused, lost and found.

When our heroine awakes in a bookstore having fallen unconscious on a bus, the proprietor chastises her for being “in public without the…thingy”.

The word “innocence” is never explicitly used, instead delicately trodden around with euphemism like “my you-know-what”.

Some references though are more transparent – there’s a sweet moment where we catch Premise leafing though a copy of No Bro Magazine…

 Muradov’s illustration style is as beguiling as it is bleak, with some of the larger-scale images on suggesting the influence of Cubism, Surrealist film and early psychoanalysis – at one point Premise is referred to as “Jung lady”.

(In a Sense) Lost and Found is atense, eerie and perplexing book. It ends, just as it began, but noe the text is scrawled and urgent: “F. Premise awoke one morning from troubled dreams to find her innocence had gone missing”.

(In a Sense) Lost and Found by Roman Muradov is published in October by Nobrow priced £12.99