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Reading lists

17 mesmerising graphic novels

Paying the Land

In this major new book by the bestselling author of Palestine Joe Sacco travels to the Arctic regions of Canada

A powerful depiction of the painful history of the Northwestern Territory's indigenous people... [Joe Sacco's] comics have earned him comparisons to Hogarth, Art Spiegelman and Robert Crumb... [Paying the Land has] an astonishing sense of place. You can smell rock, pine and snow, feel it in your bones.

Paying the Land is Sacco's first full-length work of comics journalism in a decade, and it reminds us of why he is credited as a pioneer of the genre. His combination of authorial and narrative skill and artistic talent still marks him to from many of the cartoonists who have followed in his footsteps. His ability to move between genres and tones, often in consecutive frames, seems to cut across cultures, as his global popularity attests. Comics is a particularly effective mode for Paying the Land, enabling the reader to visualise an unfamiliar landscape and lifestyle. Sacco's artistic ability is particularly striking here, especially in his intensely detailed group scenes. The white page allows him to demonstrate the vast snowy expanses of the land, and to show how it dwarfs human beings.

Urgent and compelling... This is Sacco getting to grips with the story of America itself, the story that America tells itself... Tremendously heartfelt...refreshingly honest...always thoughtful and engaging... We are nothing if not greedy for new Sacco work.

Sacco's nuanced interviews and intricate drawings capture an impressive range of voices, each searching for a route forward as the ice melts and old ways fade.

Joe Sacco...has carved a niche as a comic-book reporter, which is a strange and unusual niche to have. It's one he has made compelling... His drawings often seem more expressive than photojournalism could be, and he does what journalists do: he goes places, keeps his eyes open, talks to people and writes down what they say.

A reminder of why long-form comics journalism does things other non-fiction genres can't.

The culmination of Sacco's reportage on the Dene peoples of the Northwest Territories of Canada... he creates a nuanced picture, developed primarily through his interview subjects in their own words

Sacco's nuanced interviews and intricate drawings capture an impressive range of voices, each searching for a route forward as the ice melts and old ways fade.

Joe Sacco, one of the world's greatest cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war reportage comics. He is the author of, among other books, Palestine, which received the American Book Award, and Safe Area: Goražde, which won the Eisner Award and was named a New York Times notable book and 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, Harper's and the Guardian. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

In his first full-length work of journalism in a decade, the 'heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman' (Economist) brings his comics mastery to a story of indigenous North America, resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world 
 
*A GUARDIAN BOOK OF THE YEAR* 
 
The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around-it is central to their livelihood and their very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are also home to valuable natural resources, including oil, gas and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment-but also road-building, pipelines and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape; and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life. 
 
In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. Resource extraction is only part of Canada's colonial legacy: Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to remove the Indian from the child; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage labourers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture. 
 
Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale, Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and priests, telling a sweeping story about money and dependency, loss and culture, with stunning visual detail by one of the greatest comics reporters alive.

Footnotes in Gaza

From the great cartoonist-reporter, a sweeping, original investigation of a forgotten crime in the most vexed of places.

A meticulous investigation rendered with unforgettable humanity. 
 
 
In Footnotes in Gaza, acclaimed cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco delves into one bloody incident in 1956 that left over one hundred Palestinians dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. 
 
 
Seemingly a footnote to the long history of killing in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip notorious as a flashpoint in this bitter conflict, Sacco expertly reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. 
 
 
Through painstaking fieldwork and interviews, Sacco reconstructs the massacre and its enduring trauma, weaving past and present, memory and reportage, into a single, searing narrative. 
 
 
With Sacco’s unique visual journalism, Footnotes in Gaza transforms political abstraction into immediate human experience, offering readers an unparalleled insight into the tragedy and its moral cost. 
 
 
‘There is virtually no precedent for what he does… Sacco is legitimately unique’ The New York Review of Books

Sacco has produced a series of extraordinary comic books that convey, with unusual attentiveness to the details of everyday life, the impact that war has on civilians

Sacco is Art Spiegelman's most talented artistic descendant... [He] is tipped to win the comics world a second Pulitzer

There is virtually no precedent for what he does... Sacco is legitimately unique

Joe Sacco's brilliant, excruciating books of war reportage are potent territory... He shows how much that is crucial to our lives a book can hold

Joe Sacco, one of the world's greatest cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war reportage comics. He is the author of, among other books, Palestine, which received the American Book Award, and Safe Area: Goražde, which won the Eisner Award and was named a New York Times notable book and Time magazine's best comic book of 2000. Hisbooks have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Harper's and the Guardian. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Rafah, a town at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front rubbish-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. Situated on the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been reduced to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this most bitter of conflicts. 
 
Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinian refugees dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah - coldblooded 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 arrives in Gaza and, immersing himself in daily life, uncovers Rafah, past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, Footnotes in Gaza captures the essence of a tragedy. 
 
As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, Joe Sacco's unique visual journalism has rendered a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Footnotes in Gaza, his most ambitious work to date, transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.

Journalism

Shortlisted in the 2012 Angoulême Official Selection, a collection of comics journalism spanning conflict zones across the globe, from the inimitable Joe Sacco

It is clear that Sacco is one of the masters of his craft.

One of the most original cartoonists of the past two decades.

Sacco is formidably talented. A meticulous reporter…and a gifted artist whose richly nuanced drawings tread a delicate path between cartoonishness and naturalism.

Joe Sacco's brilliant, excruciating books of war reportage are potent territory... He shows how much that is crucial to our lives a book can hold.

As reportage, these pieces are as evocative as documentary film, and yet, drawn in Sacco’s calm, simple lines, as restrained, characterful and understated as the very best journalism.

Pretty much the hands-down boss of his particular corner of contemporary literature.

Collected here for the first time, Sacco’s darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost war correspondents working today.

Joe Sacco, one of the world’s foremost cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war-reportage comics. He is the author of Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, The Fixer, Notes from a Defeatist and Footnotes in Gaza, all published by Jonathan Cape.

‘The blessing of an inherently interpretive medium like comics is that it hasn't allowed me to . . . make a virtue of dispassion. For good or for ill, the comics medium is adamant, and it has forced me to make choices. In my view, that is part of its message’ – from the preface by Joe Sacco 
 
Over the past decade, Joe Sacco has increasingly turned to short-form com­ics journalism to report from conflict zones around the world. Collected here for the first time, Sacco's darkly funny, revealing reportage confirms his standing as one of the foremost international correspondents working today. 
 
Journalism takes readers from the smuggling tunnels of Gaza to war crimes trials in The Hague, from the lives of India's 'untouchables' to the ordeal of sub-Saharan refugees washed up on the shores of Malta. Sacco also confronts the misery and absurdity of the war in Iraq, including the darkest chapter in recent American history – the torture of detainees. 
 
Vividly depicting Sacco's own interactions with the people he meets, the stories in this remarkable collection argue for the essential truth in comics reportage, an inevitably subjective journalistic endeavour. Among Sacco's most mature and accomplished work, Journalism demonstrates the power of a great comics artist to chronicle lived experience with a force that often eludes other media.

Bumf

A collection of all-new satirical short fictional comics by the great Joe Sacco

It’s a book with an expert command of an abhorrent style – and in this is its substance.

Joe Sacco is renowned for his non-fiction books of comics journalism like Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde and Footnotes in Gaza. Now in Bumf he returns to his early days as a satirist and underground cartoonist. In the vein of the old underground comix like ZAP or Weirdo, Bumf will be puerile, disgusting, and beyond redemption. It will go where it wants to go, and do what it wants to do. It will also be very funny.

The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95

Safe Area Gorazde

The first UK publication of Joe Sacco's classic, groundbreaking work of comics journalism with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens.

Sacco has produced a work that improbably manages to combine rare insight into what the war in Bosnia felt like on the ground with a mature and nuanced political and historical understanding of the conflict... Of the myriad books that have appeared about Bosnia, few have told the truth more bravely than Sacco. He is an immense talent, from whom we will hear a great deal more.

Harrowing and bleakly humorous, Sacco's account of life during the Balkan conflict is a timeless portrait of ordinary people caught in desperate circumstances. It's also a work of genius in an unlikely genre: journalism in comic book form.

Like Art Spiegelman's Maus, Sacco's book juxtaposes the pop style of comics with human tragedy, making the brutality of war all the more jarring.

Can comics do hard-hitting journalism? That’s the question asked – and answered – by this wonderful piece of long-form reporting

Joe Sacco, one of the world’s foremost cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war-reportage comics. He is the author of Palestine, The Fixer, Notes from a Defeatist and Footnotes in Gaza, all published by Jonathan Cape.

In late 1995 and early 1996, cartoonist/reporter Joe Sacco travelled four times to Gorazde, a UN-designated safe area during the Bosnian War, which had teetered on the brink of obliteration for three and a half years. 
 
Still surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces, the mainly Muslim people of Gorazde had endured heavy attacks and severe privation to hang on to their town while the rest of Eastern Bosnia was brutally 'cleansed' of its non-Serb population. But as much as Safe Area Gorazde is an account of a terrible siege, it presents a snapshot of people who were slowly letting themselves believe that a war was ending and that they had survived. 
 
Since it was first published in 2000, Safe Area Gorazde has been recognized as one of the absolute classics of graphic non-fiction. We are delighted to publish it in the UK for the first time, to stand beside Joe Sacco's other books on the Cape list - Palestine, The Fixer and Notes from a Defeatist.

The Fixer

A new work of 'comics journalism' by the acclaimed author of Palestine.

This tightly wound, humane and suspenseful non-fiction graphic novella employs visual devices from the best traditions of film noir. Sacco's finely wrought, expressively rendered black and white drawings perfectly capture the emotional character of Sarajevo and the people who struggle to live there. This superlative and important story is easily one of the best comics non-fiction works of the year

Sacco is formidably talented. A meticulous reporter...and a gifted artist whose richly nuanced drawings tread a delicate path between cartoonishness and naturalism

Sacco's greatest achievement is to have so poignantly depicted oppression and horror in a form that manages to be both disarming and disquieting

One of the most original cartoonists of the past two decades

Joe Sacco was born in Malta. He won an American Book Award for Palestine. He is also the author of Safe Area Gorazde and Notes From a Defeatist.

In The Fixer Joe Sacco returns to Bosnia, the setting for his first masterpiece, Safe Area Gorazde. In 2001 he went back to Sarajevo to meet up with his old 'fixer', an army veteran called Neven who, for the right price, could arrange anything for the visiting journalist. Sacco gradually realized that Neven's own story - a microcosm of the Balkan conflict itself - might be the most compelling of all. Through Neven, Sacco tells the story of the warlords and gangsters who ran the country during the war, but all the time he - and the reader - never know whether Neven is telling the truth.

Notes From A Defeatist

Part documentary travelogue, part satirical autobiography, part satire pure and simple, Notes from a Defeatist collects all the shorter works that launched Joe Sacco on the path to his two book-length masterpieces of 'comics journalism', Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde.

Sacco is formidably talented. A meticulous reporter... and a gifted artist whose richly nuanced drawings tread a delicate path between cartoonishness and naturalism

It is clear that Sacco is one of the masters of his craft

Joe Sacco, one of the world’s foremost cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war-reportage comics. He is the author of Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, The Fixer, Notes from a Defeatist , Footnotes in Gaza and Journalism, all published by Jonathan Cape.

Sacco paved the way for Palestine with his powerful triptych on modern war and its innocent victims, originally published in his comic Yahoo and collected here: 'When Good Bombs Happen to Bad People' chronicles the effect of aerial warfare on civilians, from Germany and Japan in World War II to Libya in 1986; 'More Women, More Children, More Quickly' is written from a victim's perspective, as Sacco illustrates his mother's harrowing experiences during Italian and German WWII raids on Malta; and 'How I Loved the War', Defeatist's centrepiece, is Sacco's impassioned but sardonic reflection on the Gulf War, and the surrounding propaganda and media circus. Published during the reign of Bush I, it has since acquired an even sharper relevance. 
 
Defeatist also features Sacco's first (relatively) long-form piece, 'In the Company of Long Hair', a hilarious roadie's-eye view of an American punk band's eventful European tour from Amsterdam to Madrid, as well as 'Cartoon Genius', 'Voyage to the End of the Library', 'A Disgusting Experience', and 'On My Day Off', a cycle of funny and rueful autobiographic comics that display Sacco's graphic verve to its fullest extent. 
 
Defeatist is rounded off with a large section of Sacco's earliest, pointedly satirical strips (none of which has been collected in book form before) and new introductions and notes by the author. 
 
A combination of youthful indiscretions and mature masterworks, Notes from a Defeatist spotlights the work of a brilliant young artist as he defines the capabilities and potential of his chosen medium.

Palestine

The landmark work of comics journalism - by the author of Safe Area: Gorazde.

A landmark of graphic journalism, capturing the heart of day-to-day life in occupied Palestine. 
 
Palestine remains one of the most influential works of visual reportage ever created - a ground-breaking fusion of comic art and investigative journalism. 
 
Based on months of on-the-ground reporting in the early 1990s, Joe Sacco powerfully documents his own experiences and the daily lives of Palestinians during the First Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza Strip with remarkable insight and clarity. 
 
Through drawings, reportage and storytelling, Sacco captures the moments of grief, resilience and absurdity that conventional journalism can miss. Palestine is a modern classic that continues to inspire artists, journalists and readers who seek an unflinching and nuanced account of the conflict. 
 
‘The bar is set extremely high when it comes to graphic books and the Middle East: one thinks of Joe Sacco's Palestine’ Guy Delisle 
 
‘Palestine is utterly compelling, and as affecting as the work of any war photographer or poet’ Varsity 
 
For readers interested in Middle Eastern history, human rights and documentary storytelling.

A political and aesthetic work of extraordinary originality, quite unlike any other in the long, often turgid and hopelessly twisted debates that have occupied Palestinians, Israelis, and their respective supporters... With the exception of one or two novelists and poets, no one has ever rendered this terrible state of affairs better than Joe Sacco

The bar is set extremely high when it comes to graphic books and the Middle East: one thinks of Joe Sacco's Palestine

Palestine is a unique take on the Isreali/Palestinian conflict… The illustrator/reporter provides a unique perspective: there is an intimacy to Sacco’s interviews that cannot be translated into photography and text. His drawings make his subjects relatable to in a way that I think is difficult to achieve with a photograph.

Palestine is utterly compelling, and as affecting as the work of any war photographer or poet.

Joe Sacco

A masterclass in visual reportage... There’s wit and realism in the panels and art. It’s dynamic and clear... The graphic novel – a wholly unsatisfactory descriptor – can contain all the complexity of a tumultuous politics. In an era when long-form journalism is under pressure, and political analysis filleted to morsels, Sacco’s work is a lifeline.

Meticulous and beautifully crafted... he proffers a convincing thesis about how politicians leverage violence to fan the flames of old conflicts that then beget new violence. Paying homage to the importance of seeking truth, however elusive, this timely work is as powerful as it is artful

Another masterpiece of graphic non-fiction from Joe Sacco

From the ground-breaking graphics journalist and author of Palestine, a revelatory investigation of the deadly sectarian riots in 2013 Uttar Pradesh, India, and their urgent global significance today 
 
Compared to other episodes of lethal Indian communal violence, the clashes in Uttar Pradesh in 2013, the Muzaffarnagar Riot, were a relatively small-scale affair. It had happened before and will probably happen again: Hindus and Muslims, armed with guns and swords, riled up by vitriolic rhetoric and a tangle of accusations, turn on one another. The truth fragments along religious lines, both in the lead-up to the rampage and in its bloody aftermath. 
 
Joe Sacco immerses himself in Uttar Pradesh, speaking to government officials, political leaders, village chiefs, and especially the victims, who were mostly landless peasants, in a quest to understand this riot as an archetype of political violence. In the process, he probes the role of savagery in a democracy; the power of crowds, rather than leaders, to influence the course of events; the collision of competing narratives; and the accounts that perpetrators construct to explain away their participation in bloodshed. 
 
Sacco has chronicled the urgent histories that define the world around us, from the Great War to Gaza. Here, the award winning cartoonist turns his masterful visual reportage to a story that is specific to India but with implications and resonance for us all. 
 
* 
 
PRAISE FOR JOE SACCO: 
 
'One of the masters of his craft' New Statesman 
 
'A pioneer of the genre' TLS 
 
'Formidably talented.' Independent 
 
'The hands-down boss of his particular corner of contemporary literature' Dazed & Confused 
 
'Sacco's brilliant, excruciating books of war reportage are potent territory... He shows how much that is crucial to our lives a book can hold' New York Times Book Review

Joe Sacco

Praise for The Once and Future Riot

A masterclass in visual reportage... There’s wit and realism in the panels and art. It’s dynamic and clear... The graphic novel – a wholly unsatisfactory descriptor – can contain all the complexity of a tumul ...

Meticulous and beautifully crafted... he proffers a convincing thesis about how politicians leverage violence to fan the flames of old conflicts that then beget new violence. Paying homage to the importance of seeki ...

Another masterpiece of graphic non-fiction from Joe Sacco

A masterclass in visual reportage... There’s wit and realism in the panels and art. It’s dynamic and clear... The graphic novel – a wholly unsatisfactory descriptor – can contain all the complexity of a tumul ...

Meticulous and beautifully crafted... he proffers a convincing thesis about how politicians leverage violence to fan the flames of old conflicts that then beget new violence. Paying homage to the importance of seeki ...

Another masterpiece of graphic non-fiction from Joe Sacco

A masterclass in visual reportage... There’s wit and realism in the panels and art. It’s dynamic and clear... The graphic novel – a wholly unsatisfactory descriptor – can contain all the complexity of a tumul ...

Meticulous and beautifully crafted... he proffers a convincing thesis about how politicians leverage violence to fan the flames of old conflicts that then beget new violence. Paying homage to the importance of seeki ...

Another masterpiece of graphic non-fiction from Joe Sacco

Books by Joe Sacco

Articles featuring Joe Sacco

17 mesmerising graphic novels

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