Would you shell out more than $2,800 for a book you can’t even read?
Well, for 50 people around the world, that answer is apparently “yes” – because they each purchased a copy of ONEPIECE, believed to be the world’s longest single-volume book at €1,900 a pop.
Clocking in at 21,580 pages and measuring more than 80cm along its spine, ONEPIECE – a limited-run collection of the entirety of Eiichiro Oda’s best-selling Japanese comic book One Piece, printed out by French artist Ilan Manouach and bound into one absurd 17-kilogram volume – is actually not intended to be read, but to be looked at.
“This sculptural object cannot be read or displayed in bookstores. It is literally the largest book in the world by far and can be admired as the materialization of an ecosystem saturated by media. ONEPIECE exists as an object of pure speculation,” said vendor JBE Books.
You might want to watch this space, though, because a spokesperson for Shueisha – the Japanese publisher of One Piece – has told The Guardian that the “sculpture” hadn’t been run by them or the author beforehand.
“The product you mentioned is not official. We don’t give permission to them. Our licensee in France which publishes One Piece is the publisher Glénat,” the spokesperson said.
Hopefully if Monsieur Manouach gets the book thrown at him, it won’t be this one – he probably wouldn’t survive.
