Joe Sacco's Palestine, which has now passed the quarter century mark, has been brought back into print at this critical juncture in a sturdy, oversize hardcover edition. This single work, more than any other, announced the advent of comics journalism. Here, in its 300 pages, hundreds of hours of in-person, on-the-ground observation, interviews, and research have been distilled into an empathic narrative via thousands of hours of Sacco's painstaking comics work, which embodies a startling attention to the details of environment, character and historical dynamics and in the process fully demonstrated the strengths and capacities of comics journalism. ESSENTIAL
Here's the Fantagraphics statement on this new edition:
The landmark work of comics journalism by Joe Sacco, in a new hardcover edition with a new afterword by Israeli journalist Amira Hass and an introduction by Palestinian American author and critic Edward Said.
Joe Sacco's breakthrough work of graphic journalism — a now-established genre almost single handedly invented by Sacco — won the American Book Award upon its initial release in 1996, and has remained a perennial, essential work for understanding the Palestinian Israeli conflict in the Middle East. This new hardcover edition includes a new afterword by Israeli journalist Amira Hass and also features Palestinian academic and critic Edward Said’s timeless 2001 introduction to the work.
Based on several years of research and an extended visit to the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the early 1990s, where he conducted over 100 interviews with Palestinians and Jews, Palestine was the first major comics work of political and historical nonfiction by Sacco, whose name has since become synonymous with this graphic form of New Journalism. Like Safe Area Gorazde, Palestine has been favorably compared to Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus for its ability to brilliantly navigate such socially and politically sensitive subject matter through the immersive lens of the comic book medium. Sacco has often been called the first comic book journalist, and he is certainly the best.
Praise
"With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco." — Edward W. Said
"In Joe Sacco's Palestine, the autobiographical comic book reaches beyond everyday trivia to embrace the travel documentary. Utilizing a masterful array of visual devices and employing consummate draftsmanship, Sacco details life in the Occupied Territories with sensitivity, insight, and a fine eye for moral ambiguities. Highly recommended." — Alan Moore
