THE KING AND NOTHING

A monarch contemplates the sole thing lacking from his life.

Having collected all things conceivable, and more than a few things that don’t exist, the king finds himself literally wanting for nothing. In order to finally possess the one thing he doesn’t have, he sets out to explore the concept of nothing. Looking for something smaller than the tiniest animal, the king still finds microbes. “Or maybe,” he thinks, “when there is less and less of something, that leaves you with Nothing?” Cleaning up after his shedding dog, he still finds a minuscule piece of fur. Even the supposedly empty desert and night sky yield, respectively, rocks and stars. Eventually, the king opts to get rid of all his worldly goods; when the book wraps up, our protagonist, now nude, concludes that there’s “really, truly room for nothing.” The large-nosed, light-skinned king cuts a rather childlike figure in Tallec’s spare illustrations. Depictions of the king’s many possessions—“caterpillars on bicycles, bicycles with caterpillar wheels, elephants without trunks”—hint at whimsy, but the book’s rather existential meditations drag on and may perplex readers. The punchline will leave some bemused, although in the hands of an adult willing to unpack heavy themes, the story might well spur discussions about greed and nothingness.

Heady stuff, but potentially thought-provoking fare for budding existentialists.