Jerusalem

February 18, 2013
This grim and relentless comic by filmmaker Yakin was inspired by tales his Israeli father told him. It follows the families of two estranged Israeli brothers—focusing primarily on the sons of those brothers—as the many wars involving Jerusalem rage around them. They suffer life, death, and everything in between, all while searching for their own identities within a passionate love for the place they call home. The book draws lovely if depressing parallels between these families and the Arabs and Jews, as they fight for control of Jerusalem. While the troubles of the Middle East are familiar , it’s impossible not to get drawn in to the plight of these characters. The youngest sons, first cousins Motti and Jonathan, are perhaps the sole bright spots and also the most tragic aspect of this work. Best friends regardless of their fathers’ estrangement, they are eventually pulled apart as they grow up, and as Jerusalem continues to pull itself apart. The way Motti and Jonathan’s story ends is somehow both shocking and inevitable. Bertozzi’s art, in grimly appropriate shades of black, white, and grey, sets a fitting tone for a story filled with unflinchingly honest violence.

July 15, 2013
This ambitious graphic novel traces the chaotic, bloody early history of the modern Jewish state in Palestine, focusing on a fractious family living in the hotly contested city of Jerusalem. In April of 1945, the Halabys live in the motley Machane Yehuda neighborhood of British Jerusalem. After inheriting property from his late father, kind, soft-spoken patriarch Izak now lives in a modest apartment with no-nonsense Jewish-Egyptian wife Emily and their four sons and lone daughter (and, eventually, a down-on-their luck family Izak takes pity on, much to Emily's chagrin). Idealistic, artistic Avraham joins the Communist Party, under the leadership of noble Elias Habash, urging class solidarity between Jew and Arab alike. With Avraham returned from serving overseas with the Jewish brigade of the British army, dutiful David now enlists, devastating young Motti. Defiant Ezra delivers telegrams--and anti-British propaganda, journeying deeper into violent insurgency. Fearless, intelligent scamp Motti is best friends and classmates with cousin Jonathan, whose wealthy father, Yakov, deeply resents Motti's father--his own brother. Bashful Devorah struggles with self-esteem as the world around her falls apart, though Jonathan insists she's the most beautiful girl in the neighborhood. Through perils large and small--military occupation, suppression of Jewish identity, labor protests, internecine disputes, theater productions, open warfare--the family and city spiral into darkness, drenched in blood, as kindness and honor fail to overcome perceived slights. This dense work of nearly 400 pages offers almost no narration, save the opening six pages (map, condensed textual histories, illustrated family tree) that serve as a legend to be flipped back to time and again as the complex tale whirls mercilessly toward an intercut montage worthy of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather. Filmmaker and author Yakin (Marathon, 2012, etc.) doesn't offer an easy read--the story is unapologetically larger than its pages--or any easy answers, which is bittersweetly appropriate given the subject matter. Bertozzi's (Lewis & Clark, 2011, etc.) clean lines and deceptively cartoonish art deftly capture everything from subtle emotion to human dismemberment. A hefty tableau of beautifully gnashed teeth.

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Starred review from March 1, 2013
Chronicling the birth of a country so long torn by strife, Jerusalem is, fittingly, a war story. Taking place in the mid- to late 1940s, as Israel struggled to establish itself as a Jewish nation, it is about both the war against British occupiers and Palestinian residents and the story of a family at war with itself. The Halaby familyangry, stubborn, fractious, but ultimately fiercely committedproves effective both as metaphor for the strife and as a way to put a human face on a much larger piece of history, with individual characters able to illicit both livid frustration and deep sympathy. In a visually dazzling move, Bertozzi (Louis and Clark, 2011) embraces artistic styles with conceptual connections to the material. His work shares gray tones and idiosyncratically humanistic character lines with Will Eisner'sa pioneer of Jewish realism in comicsand the battle scenes, of which there are many, are deftly suspenseful but also highlight the tragic cost of warfare, a balance perfected by EC's classic Two-Fisted Tales. Though it does include a two-page primer on the political history of the region, this is most powerful for investing a massive and complex issue with real human emotion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)