The Full Story

Fragments of life. Fictions of a moment. A book of revelations in miniature.

In this hauntingly beautiful collaboration between writer Chips Hardy and illustrator Oscar Grillo, The Full Story offers a genre-defying sequence of one-page narratives—each a glimpse into a life, a death, a joke, or an epiphany. Hardy’s tales are lean and luminous, by turns wry, tragic, surreal and piercingly humane. Grillo’s artwork answers them with a visual world just as unpredictable—delirious, tender, uncanny, sublime.

Together, they compose a new kind of storytelling: elliptical, illustrated literature for the fractured age. One story per spread. One image. One moment. And yet, across these fragments, a deeper coherence gathers: the shock of being alive, the absurdity of the everyday, the poignancy of what passes.

Hardy—co-creator of the acclaimed television series Taboo, and winner of Writers’ Guild and British Comedy Awards—writes with the compression of poetry and the perspective of a playwright. Grillo—winner of Cannes, BAFTA, and Oscar accolades—delivers a visual counterpoint that’s as layered and enigmatic as the tales themselves.

A work of rare invention and emotional scope, The Full Story invites you to read slowly, look closely, and return often.