RAMALLAH, April 10 (JMCC) - Comic book artist Guy Delisle sketches the daily ironies of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in a new graphic novel due out later this month.
In excerpts
published by Foreign Policy, Delisle pokes fun at the layers of religion and conflict that shape life in Israel and the occupied territories. He visits Hebron and writes of settler harassment, as well as the many clicking cameras at Qalandiya checkpoint that separates Ramallah from Jerusalem.
Like
in his three previous graphic novels about Shenzhen, China; Pyongyang,
North Korea; and Burma; Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City offers a
series of vignettes illustrating the personal frustrations and small
victories of daily life in a foreign land: searching for booze in a
Muslim supermarket, trying to outsmart Ben Gourion airport's legendary
security screenings, or stumbling upon a quiet and secluded monastery.
Foreign Policy has an exclusive excerpt of the book, which comes out in
the United States on April 24.
In one frame at the zoo, Delisle (rather questionably) contrasts the black and white of several ultra-orthodox Jewish men in conservative dress looking at a family of chimps.
The work was created after Delisle lived in Jerusalem with his wife, an administrator for Medecin Sans Frontiers.