Product Description

In late 1991 and early 1992, at the time of the first Intifada, Joe Sacco spent two months with the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, travelling and taking notes. Upon returning to the United States, he started writing and drawing Palestine, which combines the techniques of eyewitness reportage with the medium of comic-book storytelling to explore this complex, emotionally weighty situation. He captures the heart of the Palestinian experience in image after unforgettable image, with great insight and remarkable humour. The nine-issue comics series won a 1996 American Book Award. It is now published for the first time in one volume, befitting its status as one of the great classics of graphic non-fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2277 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 296 pages

Review
'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.' Edward Said

About the Author
Joe Sacco was born in Malta and lives in Queens, New York. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in journalism. As well as the award-winning Palestine, his other book, Safe Area: Gorazde, about his time in Bosnia, won the Will Eisner Award for Best Original Graphic Novel in 2001. In 2001 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to work on his next project.

Customer Reviews

A corner stone in comic book journalism.
Bearing in mind that no documentary, especially not on war, is ever going to be objective and thus that any reader's reaction is bound to be subjective, this work is going to stir people's feelings.
Joe Sacco's work is unique in that unlike most journalists, not only has he chosen to use comics/graphic novels as a medium but also he has a much less superficial way of working. This book and the one on Sarajevo offer a real insight on the plight of people's life in a war stricken zone. The fact that the author does not restrict himself to citing historic facts but also goes in to show apparently meaningless details about the local population's daily life only makes the horror of it all more obvious.
Though showing the plight of the Palestinians during the first "Intifada", I do not feel this is antisemitic or whatever. Joe Sacco strives to expose the first victims of any conflict, the civilians, and how that suffering is used by the waring factions on both sides against the opponent.
This might be a "comic book" but it is also a major work showing this medium to be on par with written litterature or films at their best. It is no surprise this book has received so many awards from people who are not in the "comics" business.
A definite must read for anyone interested in good journalism or on this crisis.

Excellent, thought-provoking and informative
This is an incredible work of comic journalism, an incredible work of journalism full stop. Sacco spends two months in Israel and the occupied territories, living with the people, hearing their stories, and relaying them to us as directly as he is able.

At first I was a little disappointed to hear little from the Israelis, it felt like I might not be getting the whole story, but as Joe himself says, that side of the story is one that is regularly aired in the media. What we get here, as in very few other places, is a real feel of what life is like for a Palestinian, living in a refugee camp. The book is not a political polemic (although it does set out a little-heard of history of Israel from a Palestinian viewpoint), nor does it offer any easy solutions (or even any solutions), but it documents the pain and suffering of a people in a way that you're unlikely to get elsewhere.

I strongly recommend anyone who has any interest in the situation in the middle east (which these days, lets face it, should be all of us) to read this book.

History as lived by real people
A truly wonderful book of journalism that shows the reader what it actually means to live, work, struggle, travel, have kids, survive and die as a Palestinian in the West bank and Gaza.
There are some truly heartbreaking stories in here, made even more so for me by the realisation that in years of hearing about the Middle East on the news I had never got any sense of what it means for a people to live their whole lives in these conditions.
Sacco tells his experiences in a self-deprecating way, never holier-than-thou or over-sentimental, always respectful. The artwork is at once simple and full of intricate detail, and beautiful to look at, even when it's subject matter is dark.

Ideally, it should make no difference to those reading this to know that I am of Jewish descent. But I find that for some reason, adding this point sometimes helps people avoid lazily dismissing reviews like this as "anti-Semitic" or somesuch.

Good honest hournalists like Joe Sacco are putting this stuff out there. How many of us choose to read and understand and then act on this kind of reporting (in the West, as much as in the Middle East) is, I think, what will decide how many more people suffer, for how long.