With gentle humor and a keen eye for revelatory detail, Neufeld explores religion and spirituality, politics and personalities, and the mysteries of everyday life. From the creator ofA.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge and the illustrator of theNew York Times bestsellerThe Influencing Machine: Brook Gladstone On the Media.

In A Few Perfect Hours (and Other Stories from Southeast Asia and Central Europe), autobiographical cartoonist Josh Neufeld takes us on a dramatic tour of places as exotic and different as Thailand, Singapore, and the former Yugoslavia. Highlights include Neufeld and traveling companion Sari Wilson's stint as extras in a Chinese-language Singaporean soap opera, a train trip through war-torn Serbia, and a near-disastrous cave adventure in Thailand.

With gentle humor and a keen eye for the revelatory detail, Neufeld explores religion and spirituality, politics and personalities, and the mysteries of everyday life. His stories reflect the backpacker's conflicted feelings: a yearning for adventure mixed with homesickness and a sense of disconnection, trapped in a reality constantly in flux.

In the collection's title story, Neufeld illustrates how the tensions and fears involved in travel through a strange country are dispelled by a Thai monk's blessing. In "On a Mission," Neufeld contrasts the viewpoints of American Baptist missionaries in northern Thailand with the traditions of a Buddhist festival. And the book's longest story, "Cremations, Cubicles, and Cant," is a brand-new 20-page tale about the death of Neufeld's grandmother,which contrasts her Jewish funeral service with a Balinese cremation ceremony; it forms the emotional heart of the book.

Evoking both Tintin-creator Hergé and "comics journalist" Joe Sacco, "Neufeld's stories operate on a very human level, and his art reflects that with its careful depictions of people from different cultures and backgrounds." [iComics] Throughout the collection, Neufeld uses the comics form to experiment with narrative and point-of-view. The themes and conventions of the eight stories inA Few Perfect Hours will resonate with readers both within and outside the comics world.

Comics Worth Reading observes that Neufeld's comics "provide a street-level view of other cultures, with nothing whitewashed. . . . The stories often remind us of the point of travelling -- to experience and come to terms with the unknown."