Description

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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 W. 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 W. 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.

About the Author

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Joe Sacco lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of many acclaimed graphic novels, including Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, But I Like It, Notes from a Defeatist, The Fixer, War's End, and Footnotes in Gaza.

Edward W. Said was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Literature and of Kings College Cambridge, his celebrated works include Orientalism, The End of the Peace Process, Power, Politics and Culture, and the memoir Out of Place. He is also the editor, with Christopher Hitchens, of Blaming the Victims, published by Verso. He died in September 2003. 

Amira Hass is an Israeli journalist and author, known for her columns in the daily newspaper Haaretz covering Palestinian affairs in Gaza and the West Bank, where she has lived for almost thirty years.

Praise For…

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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

Sacco uses the comic book format to its fullest extent, creating bold perspectives that any photojournalist would envy.
— Utne Reader