by Joe Sacco
Metropolitan Books
10/12/2010, paperback
SKU: 9780805092776
Rafah, a town at the bottommost tip of the Gaza Strip, has long been a notorious flashpoint in the bitter Middle East conflict. Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinians shot dead by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah--cold-blooded massacre or dreadful mistake--reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war.
In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco immerses himself in the daily life of Rafah and the neighboring town of Khan Younis, uncovering Gaza past and present. As in Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde, his unique visual journalism renders a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, Footnotes in Gaza--Sacco's most ambitious work to date--transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.
Reviews:
"Having already established his reputation as the world's leading comics journalist, Sacco is now making a serious case to be considered one of the world's top journalists, period. His newest undertaking is a bracing quest to uncover the truth about what happened in two Gaza Strip towns in 1956... Sacco's art is alternately epic and intimate, but it's his exacting and harrowing interviews that make this book an invaluable and wrenching piece of journalism." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Solid, old-fashioned war reporting... a superb way into the truth of events, understanding different sides and poking around in people's minds and houses. Unlike a war photographer, Sacco always gets the best shot, perfectly framed, sometimes years after the event. Unlike a writer, he adds facial expressions to each statement. And unlike a film maker, he can slip between past and present without the jolt of costumed docudrama... I learned more about the Palestinians, war, the intifada and the best honey pastries in Gaza than I ever had from newspapers or television." --The Times (UK)
About the Author:
Joe Sacco, one of the world's foremost cartoonists, is the author of, among other books, Palestine, which received the American Book Award, and Safe Area Gorazde, which won the Eisner Award and was named Time magazine's best comic book of 2000. His books have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, and Harper's. He lives in Portland, Oregon.