Graphic Novels

In this section we'll keep you up to date with news of books you might be interested in. The information will come from the publishers' website and we will add our reviews as often as we can.

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I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors

Bernice Eisenstein

Picador ISBN 0330441574 

A searing memoir told in a unique fusion of illustrations and prose

'The Holocaust is a drug and I have entered an opium den . . . I will discover that there is no end to the dealers I can find for just one more hit. My parents don't even realize that they are drug dealers. They could never imagine the kind of high H gives, making me want to dive into its endless depth. Sending me out to libraries to read any and every book that dealt with the Holocaust . . . the paper could all be chopped up into a fine powder, like ash, perhaps, laid down, row upon row, and snorted'

Uniquely structured and uniquely told, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is a distillation of Bernice Eisenstein's memories of her 1950s childhood as the daughter of Yiddish-speaking parents whose experiences during the war, while rarely spoken of, were nonetheless a constant presence.

Eisenstein's parents met in Auschwitz as the war was ending, and were married shortly after its liberation. This extraordinary memoir began to take root in her imagination several years ago, almost a decade after her father's death; she began with a series of drawings of her father, but realized that pictures alone could not convey what she had to say - 'And so I entered into a dance between pictures and the written word. I had two languages that worked together - to translate the layered meaning of my past, and that of my parents, on to the page.'

In an amazing synthesis of prose and illustration, and with poignancy and searing honesty, Eisenstein explores with ineffable sadness and bittersweet humour her childhood growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust, while also addressing universal themes of memory, loss and recovery of the past. I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors is striking, original and unforgettable; it has the makings of a classic.

A Contract with God

Will Eisner

W W Norton & Co Ltd ISBN 978-0393328042

January 2007

A revolutionary novel, "A Contract With God" re-creates the neighbourhood of Will Eisner's youth through a quartet of interwoven stories. Called "a masterpiece" by R. Crumb, "A Life Force" chronicles not only the Great Depression but also the rise of Nazism and the spread of socialist politics. In "Dropsie Avenue", Eisner traces the social trajectory of this mythic avenue over four centuries, creating an unending "story of life, death, and resurrection".

Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Will Eisner hawked newspapers on Wall Street before launching one of the most illustrious careers in graphic history. The comic industry’s top annual awards, “The Eisners,” are named in his honor.

Mendel's Daughter

Martin Lemelman

Jonathan Cape   ISBN: 0224078569

Just as Art Spiegelman’s Maus presented a dramatic new framework in which to view the Holocaust, Mendel’s Daughter combines an unforgettable true story with elegant, haunting illustrations to shed new light on one of history’s darkest periods. In 1989 Martin Lemelman videotaped his mother, Gusta, as she opened up about her childhood in 1930’s Poland and her eventual escape from Nazi persecution. Now, in Mendel’s Daughter, Lemelman lovingly transcribes his mother’s harrowing testimony in her own words. He brings her narrative to life with his own powerful black and white drawings, interspersed with reproductions of actual photos, documents and other relics from that unsettled era. The result is a wholly original, authentic and moving account of hope and survival in a time of despair.

Mendel's Daughter opens with a picture of shtetl life, filled with homey images that evoke the richness of foods and flowers, of family and friends and Jewish tradition. Soon, however, Gusta’s girlhood is cut short as her family becomes witness to the rise of Hitler, rumours of war, invasion, occupation, roundups and pogroms. We follow Gusta into flight, hiding and survival: into the unfolding uncertainty of those terrible times.

As solemn and as hopeful as a prayer, Mendel’s Daughter is Martin Lemelman’s testament to Gusta’s bravery and a celebration of her perseverance. The devastatingly simple power of a mother’s words and a son’s illustrations combine to create a work that is both intensely personal and universally resonant.

The Story of the Jews: A 4,000-Year Adventure

Stan Mack

Jewish Lights Publishing ISBN 978-1580231558

August 2001

Through witty, illustrated narrative, celebrated artist Stan Mack will take you on a rewarding pictorial journey through 4,000 years of ups and downs in Jewish history. The first “graphic history book” of its kind, The Story of the Jews celebrates the major characters and events that have shaped the Jewish people and culture, illustrating what it means to be Jewish. You will visit all the major Jewish happenings from biblical times to the twenty-first century—from Abraham and Sarah on the banks of the Euphrates to the Diaspora, intermarriage, and the State of Israel.

Stan Mack is an award-winning cartoonist and former art director of the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He has created cartoon features for Adweek, Bon Appetit, Modern Maturity, Natural History, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. He has authored and/or illustrated over a dozen books for children, teens (in collaboration with Janet Bode), and adults.

Exit Wounds

Rutu Modan

Jonathan Cape ISBN 0224081667
June 2007

Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, Exit Wounds is the first graphic novel to be published in Britain by one of Israel's best-known cartoonists.

A young man, Koby Franco, receives an urgent phone call from a female soldier. Learning that his estranged father may have been a victim of a suicide bombing in Hadera, Koby reluctantly joins the soldier in searching for clues. His death would certainly explain his empty apartment and disconnected phone line. As Koby tries to unravel the mystery of his father's death, he finds himself not only piecing together the last few months of his father's life, but his entire identity.

With thin, precise lines and luscious watercolours, Modan creates a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death mingles with the slow dissolution of family ties.

Rutu Modan has received several awards in Israel and abroad, including the Best Illustrated Children's Book Award from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem four times and Young Artist of the Year from the Israel Ministry of Culture, and is a chosen artist of the Israel Cultural Excellence Foundation.

Klezmer

Joann Sfar

First Second Books ISBN 1-59643-198-9

Meet Noah Davidovich, dubbed The Baron of My Backside and his unlikely band of musicians:

...Chava, a young woman who follows The Baron away from her remote village; Yaacov, a favored student whose rabbi has banished him from his yeshiva; Vincenzo, a wandering Italian fiddler; and Tshokola, a gypsy pursued by Cossacks - all unforgettable new characters from the inimitable Joann Sfar.

In a startling, loose watercolor style, Sfar evokes the Jewish communities of pre-World War II Eastern Europe and the itinerant klezmer musicians who performed at celebrations, festivals, and cabarets. Following in the tradition of Isaac Bashevis Singer's short stories and rambling Yiddish folktales, Sfar's colorful characters personify the multifarious influences that have poured into the music of klezmer, and into the Yiddish t

The first book in a series featuring The Baron and his musical fellowship, Klezmer is at once dark and lighthearted, tragic and hilarious, violent and tender - and Sfar himself never ceases to amaze, to surprise, and to defy categorization.

The Rabbi's Cat

Joann Sfar

Pantheon ISBN 978-0-375-71464-1

The preeminent work by one of France’s most celebrated young comics artists, The Rabbi’s Cat tells the wholly unique story of a rabbi, his daughter, and their talking cat–a philosopher brimming with scathing humor and surprising tenderness.
In Algeria in the 1930s, a cat belonging to a widowed rabbi and his beautiful daughter, Zlabya, eats the family parrot and gains the ability to speak. To his master’s consternation, the cat immediately begins to tell lies (the first being that he didn’t eat the parrot). The rabbi vows to educate him in the ways of the Torah, while the cat insists on studying the kabbalah and having a Bar Mitzvah. They consult the rabbi’s rabbi, who maintains that a cat can’t be Jewish–but the cat, as always, knows better.
Zlabya falls in love with a dashing young rabbi from Paris, and soon master and cat, having overcome their shared self-pity and jealousy, are accompanying the newlyweds to France to meet Zlabya’s cosmopolitan in-laws. Full of drama and adventure, their trip invites countless opportunities for the rabbi and his cat to grapple with all the important–and trivial–details of life.
Rich with the colors, textures, and flavors of Algeria’s Jewish community, The Rabbi’s Cat brings a lost world vibrantly to life–a time and place where Jews and Arabs coexisted–and peoples it with endearing and thoroughly human characters, and one truly unforgettable cat.

The Complete Maus

Art Spiegelman

Penguin Books ISBN 978-0141014081

October 2003

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. 

Art Spiegelman is a contributing editor and artist for the New Yorker, and co-founder/editor of Raw, the acclaimed magazine of avant-garde comics and graphics. His drawings and prints have been exhibited in museums and galleries here and abroad. Honours he has received for Maus include the Pulitzer Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in New York City.