Art by Shaun Tan

Tan, the son of a Chinese-Malaysian father and Australian mother, built his career on illustrated books that use surreal, invented imagery to explore migration, displacement, and not quite belonging anywhere fully, themes he's connected directly to his own mixed background. His best-known book, "The Arrival," tells an entire immigration story without a single word of text, relying purely on a strange, sepia-toned invented world to carry the narrative. He won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for "The Lost Thing" (2011), adapted from his own book, and has also won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award, the largest prize in children's literature.