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Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family
In this intergenerational graphic memoir, renowned video game designer Jordan Mechner traces the path his family takes as it's uprooted by war, Nazi occupation, and everyday marital strife.
1914. A teenage romantic heads to the enlistment office when his idyllic life in a Jewish enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is upended 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.
1914. A teenage romantic heads to the enlistment office when his idyllic life in a Jewish enclave of the Austro-Hungarian Empire is upended 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.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published March 19, 2024
About the author
Jordan Mechner
29 books66 followersJordan Mechner is an author, graphic novelist, video game designer, and screenwriter. He created Prince of Persia as a solo game developer in the 1980s, joined forces with Ubisoft to relaunch the series in 2003 with Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, and adapted it as a 2010 live-action film for Disney. Jordan's books include his game development journals The Making of Karateka and The Making of Prince of Persia, the graphic novels Templar (a New York Times bestseller) and Monte-Cristo. His games include Karateka and The Last Express. In 2017, he received the Pioneer Award from the International Game Developers Association. @jmechner on Instagram, Facebook, Mastodon and Twitter.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 3, 2023
Actual rating: 4.5 stars
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Jordan Mechner, à qui l'on doit la série des jeux vidéos Prince of Persia, enfile ici sa casquette d'auteur/dessinateur pour nous livrer ce roman graphique très personnel. Il y narre en parallèle son expatriation à Montpellier pour travailler sur un nouvel opus de Prince of Persia et l'exil de son père et sa famille pour fuir la seconde guerre mondiale.
Pour cette partie du récit, Mechner se base à la fois sur les souvenirs d'enfance de son père, Franzi, d'une part et sur les carnets de mémoires écrits par son grand-père Adolph d'autre part. Les trois récits s'entremêlent de façon très fluide et rendent la lecture de ce roman graphique agréable et facile à suivre. Le choix de la mise en couleur qui utilise trois teintes différentes selon les époques n'y est pas pour rien et m'a un peu rappelé celle de The Magic Fish dans une version plus neutre.
Au final une lecture très agréable, que vous vous intéressiez aux jeux vidéos ou pas, car ce n'est pas là le focus principal du récit. J'ai beaucoup aimé.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
Jordan Mechner, à qui l'on doit la série des jeux vidéos Prince of Persia, enfile ici sa casquette d'auteur/dessinateur pour nous livrer ce roman graphique très personnel. Il y narre en parallèle son expatriation à Montpellier pour travailler sur un nouvel opus de Prince of Persia et l'exil de son père et sa famille pour fuir la seconde guerre mondiale.
Pour cette partie du récit, Mechner se base à la fois sur les souvenirs d'enfance de son père, Franzi, d'une part et sur les carnets de mémoires écrits par son grand-père Adolph d'autre part. Les trois récits s'entremêlent de façon très fluide et rendent la lecture de ce roman graphique agréable et facile à suivre. Le choix de la mise en couleur qui utilise trois teintes différentes selon les époques n'y est pas pour rien et m'a un peu rappelé celle de The Magic Fish dans une version plus neutre.
Au final une lecture très agréable, que vous vous intéressiez aux jeux vidéos ou pas, car ce n'est pas là le focus principal du récit. J'ai beaucoup aimé.
March 25, 2024
Calling it now, this might just be my Book of the Year. It’s a moving intergenerational memoir of Jordan, Franz, and Adolf Mechner, showing the hardships they endure and the surprising ways their lives connect. I’ve already considered Mechner a bit of a Renaissance man; this just confirms it. Easiest five stars I’ve given in months.
March 24, 2024
As a kid of the ’80’s, I grew up on the Apple ][. I played Karateka and Prince of Persia, not fully grasping at the time just how advanced or forward thinking the games truly were. Karateka brought the idea of story and rotoscoped character motion to video games. I didn’t know the person behind the games beyond the name that flashed on the splash screen.
A friend of mine told me about the author’s works, including his development journals and the graphic novel discussed here. It isn’t focused on games and computers, though it does provide a backdrop. The core is how three generations of his family dealt with the events of WW1, WW2 and growing up in modern times. The author uses a different color for each era, making it easy to keep up with the flipping back and forth between time lines.
The author has a rich family history to tap into. It is tragic and hopeful. We get to see the events proceeding to WW2 from the eyes of a Jewish family, running away from ever encroaching Nazies. There is a lot of luck involved, they being the fortunate ones. Many others in the extended family were not so lucky. It is painful to know the fates of them.
The author lays bare a lot of his family history, including his own. Two marriages, two kids, obsessive to tell more of the Prince of Persia story. He makes points of pride, regrets and challenges as he attempts to hold his own family together while making a video game. It is this vulnerability that gives the book its weight and power. Amazing story telling.
A friend of mine told me about the author’s works, including his development journals and the graphic novel discussed here. It isn’t focused on games and computers, though it does provide a backdrop. The core is how three generations of his family dealt with the events of WW1, WW2 and growing up in modern times. The author uses a different color for each era, making it easy to keep up with the flipping back and forth between time lines.
The author has a rich family history to tap into. It is tragic and hopeful. We get to see the events proceeding to WW2 from the eyes of a Jewish family, running away from ever encroaching Nazies. There is a lot of luck involved, they being the fortunate ones. Many others in the extended family were not so lucky. It is painful to know the fates of them.
The author lays bare a lot of his family history, including his own. Two marriages, two kids, obsessive to tell more of the Prince of Persia story. He makes points of pride, regrets and challenges as he attempts to hold his own family together while making a video game. It is this vulnerability that gives the book its weight and power. Amazing story telling.
April 12, 2024
In this graphic novel memoir, Mechner recounts his struggles to keep his family together when he moved to France to work on a new video game. During this time he reminisces of the games he made previously, especially Prince of Persia. But he also weaves in stories of the struggles his father and grandfather had as Jews living in Europe. He includes his father’s stories of fleeing from Austria to France as a child during WWII, and stories from his grandfather’s memoir which details memories of fleeing the Germans in WWII and fighting for Austria in the Great War.
This graphic novel memoir has lots of amazing and heart-breaking stories. The individual stories are great, but it struggles in other ways. It is very jumpy back and forth through stories and timelines, and so the overarching narrative of families struggling to stay together isn’t very clear. I do like the use of color to try to differentiate between the different timelines, but it’s still confusing. 3 stars for jumpiness, but rounded up to 4 stars because the stories are just astounding.
This graphic novel memoir has lots of amazing and heart-breaking stories. The individual stories are great, but it struggles in other ways. It is very jumpy back and forth through stories and timelines, and so the overarching narrative of families struggling to stay together isn’t very clear. I do like the use of color to try to differentiate between the different timelines, but it’s still confusing. 3 stars for jumpiness, but rounded up to 4 stars because the stories are just astounding.
April 16, 2024
I enjoyed this graphic novel. The author was the original creator of Prince of Persia (one of the few video games I experienced growing up in a no-TV, no-video-game household). This book combines his story of moving to Paris for a reboot of the game (shades of Tomorrrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow) with his family story: father and grandfather who escaped Vienna during World War II; grandfather who fought in Russia and Italy during WWI. His family was very lucky and prescient; although the Holocaust clearly is alluded to and exists at the edges of the story it is nowhere near as harrowing as, say, Maus (which one of my daughters just read for school. I thought it was thought-provoking and well told.
April 18, 2024
One frequent refrain in memoirs is how the past affects the present. “Replay: Memoir of an Uprooted Family” by Joran Mechner (First Second) shows the importance of relating stories from the past in order for the current generation to understand the history of their family. The graphic memoir offers three different stories: the first and most interesting is a record put together by the author/artist’s grandfather about his life in Austria, first his service in the army during World War I and then his escape from Europe, although Mechner’s father was, at first, left behind in Paris when his father moved to Cuba.
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
See the rest of my review at https://www.thereportergroup.org/book...
March 31, 2024
A beautiful memoir of Jordan Mechner's family's journey through two world wars and across two continents, and with Jordan's own story as he juggles relationships and his demanding career as a workaholic award-winning video game designer.
While I found the book's flashback narrative somewhat disjointed, such that keeping up with all the various characters was difficult, the story kept me turning the pages until the bittersweet ending. I may try to re-read it in chronological order, as I think it will be much easier to figure out all the family connections without all the flash-backs and flash-forwards.
While I found the book's flashback narrative somewhat disjointed, such that keeping up with all the various characters was difficult, the story kept me turning the pages until the bittersweet ending. I may try to re-read it in chronological order, as I think it will be much easier to figure out all the family connections without all the flash-backs and flash-forwards.
August 15, 2023
This was very long, very rambling, very jumpy, and very disorganized. I can’t imagine it was easy to try to combine three men’s stories into one, and occasionally they do overlap in very pleasing ways, but overall I just found this strangely self-gratifying. it almost felt like he wanted to toot his own horn a little bit, which I guess is expected in a memoir. Maybe it’s because he just seems like an unappealing person. I found myself looking for the opportunities to read more about his father and grandfather.
January 17, 2024
Bon si j'ai trouvé l'idée bonne, et certains éléments intéressants. Je dois dire que ça a été souvent confus pour moi. Les changements de temporalités ont beau être de differentes couleurs, ce n'était pas toujours évident. Régulièrement je me disais "mais qui parle ?"
Je trouve que ce format, allant de l'un à l'autre comme ça n'est pas maîtrisé. J'ai manqué d'intérêts. J'aurai préféré plus de prise sur les récits. Un peu par ci par là, ça ne me plaît pas du tout.
Je trouve que ce format, allant de l'un à l'autre comme ça n'est pas maîtrisé. J'ai manqué d'intérêts. J'aurai préféré plus de prise sur les récits. Un peu par ci par là, ça ne me plaît pas du tout.
March 27, 2024
Author does an amazing job telling three stories: that of his grandfather who was born in the Austria-Hungarian empire, served in WW I and was then forced to flee to the Americas on the eve of war. The author's father, as a small child, flees with his father but endures several years of separation while hiding in Vichy France. Finally the author tells his own story of falling in love with game design while managing his own tumultuous personal life. An enjoyable read.
March 30, 2024
Just fabulous. Maybe it's because his family history is not a world of different from mine, or maybe it's because his journey and interests feels intertwined with my own, but I wept openly as I read the final third of this. It's beautiful and heartbreaking; true and relevant; deeply resonant in the way Maus was a generation ago. I learned about myself as I read it; I can't recommend it enough.
April 5, 2024
There is something for everyone in this graphic novel
The imagery and stories apply in large and small ways to the American experience. You don’t need to be a software developer or have a white mouse pet, or be from an immigrant family to find something that sings to you.
The imagery and stories apply in large and small ways to the American experience. You don’t need to be a software developer or have a white mouse pet, or be from an immigrant family to find something that sings to you.
October 16, 2023
super intéressant mais trop décousu et désorganisé
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February 5, 2024Booklist review pending
April 5, 2024
Several overlapping stories between generations. Touching on survival, history and technology.
April 11, 2024
End made me tear up. 3.5/5
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews