Book Review: Footnotes in Gaza by Joe Sacco

Footnotes in Gaza is a graphic book written by a journalist and is well-supported by his investigation about two comparatively unknown massacres of people in the Palestinian towns Khan Younis and Rafah in 1956, committed by Israeli army. Joe Sacco is a brilliant graphic journalist whose offerings from the war-torn areas from across the world, in the graphic report form, are said to be matchless.

Working through the memories of survivors and UN/govt. files pertaining to these two episodes, ignored as insignificant events in the Middle East, Sacco documents what really happened then. Though the story is consigned to be nothing but forgotten footnotes, Sacco feels it is imperative to tell it because the past and present are a remorseless continuum and history must be built from these obscure blocks.

If viewed on the lines of Mossad, Footnotes in Gaza, rather, is an influential work. Joe Sacco, of Maltese-American origin, has no personal axe to grind. In the early 2000s before Hamas takes over Gaza, leading to its (US-EU backed) total blockade, Sacco went and lived in several towns of Gaza to collect data. He makes allowances for unreliability of eyewitnesses due to passage of half a century of time and also due to partisan bias. Thus, he infuses some objectivity to the account of Israeli brutality in the face of their opponents' helplessness.

The writing is measured. The narrative oscillates to and fro effortlessly giving perspective to a long forgotten episode. The drawings are poignant and intense, each frame contributing to the story just how a paragraph in a literary book would do. The combination of these two, the author's unhurried construction of the events, his objective rendering of emotions in the frames bestows tremendous character to this graphic journal.

The extraordinary writing and pictures of Footnotes not only relives the poignancy of brutal massacres in distant time and space, but also tells why and how hatred was planted in hearts of people. The best graphic book ever produced on the war-torn theme.

Comments

Poem Summary: Where The Mind Is Without Fear by Rabindranath Tagore

Poem by Rabindranath Tagore: Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is led forward by thee Into ever-widening thought and action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake. Short Summary: This poem is written by Rabindranath Tagore during pre-independence days, when India was a colony of the British. The underlying theme of the poem is absolute freedom; the poet wants the citizens of his country to be living in a free state. According to the poem, we see that the poet is expressing his views there should be a country, like where people live without any sort of fear and with pure dignity…they should

Book Review: The Blue Umbrella by Ruskin Bond

Among all Ruskin Bond books, The Blue Umbrella has, so far, gathered immense applaud from readers and critics alike. This is a short novel, but the kind of moral lessons it teaches to us are simply overwhelming. This is a story of Binya, a poor little girl living with her mother and an elder brother, Bijju, in a small hilly village of Garhwal. One day while herding her two cows back home, she stumbles upon some city people enjoying the picnic in the valley. She is enthralled to see them well-groomed and rich. She craves to be one like them and among many other things of their, a blue frilly umbrella catches her attention. She begins craving for it. On the other hand, the city people get attracted by her innocent beauty and the pendant in her neck. The pendant consists of leopard’s claw – which is considered a mascot widely in the hills. Binya trades her pendant off with the blue umbrella. The blue umbrella is so much beautiful that soon it becomes a topic of conversation fo

Poem Summary: Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ozymandias is a short poem of fourteen lines written by Percy Bysshe Shelley. The concurrent theme of the poem is that nothing remains intact and same forever in this world. Even the brightest of metal, one day decays with passage of time. The throne name of Egyptian King Ramesses is Ozymandias. It was his dearest desire to preserve himself forever by building a huge statue that he thought would never tumble down. Stanza 1: I met a traveller from an antique land Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; Summary: The poet narrates the poem through the eyes of a traveler who seems to have come back from a remote and far-away land, referring to Egypt. The traveler r

Kevein Books and Reviews

Search This Blog