Moto Hagio was born in 1949 and lives in Japan. She is widely considered the most beloved shōjo manga artist of all time. Her graphic novel A Drunken Dream was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2011.

A shōjo classic in english for the first time.

The setting: A boys’ boarding school in Germany, sometime in the latter 20th Century. Fourteen year-old Thomas Werner falls from a lonely pedestrian overpass to his death immediately after sending a single, brief letter to a schoolmate:

To Juli, one last time

This is my love

This is the sound of my heart

Surely you must understand

Thus begins the legendary and enigmatic Heart of Thomas, by Moto Hagio. Inspired by Jean Delannoy’s 1964 film, Les Amitiés Particulières, The Heart of Thomas was nearly cancelled early in its serialization, in 1974, until Hagio’s first trade paperback, The Poe Clan, Volume 1, sold out in a single day, giving her new series a new lease on life. The result was a story more complex, less accessible, and yet so compelling it can be found near or at the top of any list of classic shōjo manga. Translated by manga scholar Matt Thorn and packaged with the same loving attention to detail as Hagio’s Eisner Award nominated A Drunken Dream, The Heart of Thomas is already the most eagerly anticipated manga translation of the new decade. Black & white throughout