One of my favorite readers wrote in to say that he’s planning a course focused around Arabic graphic novels. Please add your recommendations; my list is very Egypt-centric:

Graphic novels or novellas

In September 2014, the American University in Beirut (AUB) began a new academic program focused entirely on the study, archiving, and promotion of Arab comic art. Now they have an online library guide to take you through the collection:

From Damluji’s majalat.tumblr.com/

In September of last year, the AUB joined the few other institutions offering degrees and supporting research on comic art. In a Fanar Media report on the new program last fall, comics researcher Nadim Damluji said that Arabic comics have become a vibrant genre.

“I think the art that has been produced post-2000 is as good if not better than similar art produced in the bigger markets of the United States, Europe and Japan,” Damluji told Fanar Media. Yet, despite this, “they are often left out of conversations of the medium in the Western academy.”

Lina Ghaibeh, the initiative’s founding director, who gave the popular talk “Propaganda in Comics in the Arab World,” pointed the way toward the special section of the AUB library website.

The guide, according to the site, “is a starting point for information on comic books, graphic novels and comic magazines in the Arab world. The guide also highlights the conceptual and historical aspects of comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels as well as drawing and cartooning techniques.” It has lists of graphic novels, critical work, links to online comic books, information about festivals and awards, and more.

Browse the library website.

Friday’s list of graphic novels was limited to those written in Arabic, as it was for a course taught in Arabic. But let’s be honest, some of your favorite graphic novels were written by Arabs in French:

Lettre a la Mere (Letter to Mother), by Mazen Kerbaj. This novel came out in the summer of 2013 from the French publisher L’Apocalypse and is a collection of short stories about disillusionment, alienation, and corruption set in Beirut. Now magazine called it a “Love/hate letter to Beirut.“

Beyrouth, juillet – août 2006 (Beirut, July-August 2006), by Mazen Kerbaj. This collection resists linguistic categorization, as it’s in English, French, and Arabic. It’s a cartoon memoir of the drawings Mazen Kerbaj posted on his blog during the Israeli attack in the summer of 2006. In the words of the Libalel blog, “it provides a striking testimony of daily life mixed with fear, anger, hope and doubt. His drawings reveal an undisputed mastery of the genres alternating between cartoons, poster, slogan or drawings etc.”

L’Arabe du futur (The Arab of the Future), by Riad Sattouf. This best-selling title by the French-Syrian comic artist is forthcoming from Metropolitan Books this May.

Ma Circoncision (My Circumcision), by Riad Sattouf. A review by Olivia Snaije, who strongly recommends the book, calls this a “tragi-comic autobiographical bombshell.” She notes it’s “a collection for teenagers but could very well be for adults. Funny and terrible, it is the grueling tale of an 8-year-old boy who lives in a Syrian village and is faced with his impending circumcision.”

Mourir partir revenir c’est le jeu des hirondelles, (A Game for Swallows: To Die, to Leave, to Return), by Zeina Abirached. This beautifully drawn graphic novel is also for young people – but can be enjoyed by adults — a memoir of being a child during Lebanon’s civil war. It’s also available in translation from Edward Gauvin. Others by Abirached include Mouton, 38 Rue Youssef Semaani, Beyrouth catharsis, and Beyrouth partita.

Bye Bye Babylone (Bye Bye Babylon), by Lamia Ziade, also available in translation by Olivia Snaije. This wonderfully pop-art, gaudily overdrawn illustrated novel of civil war that contasts consumerist “paradise” with the parallel consumerist and consuming civil war.

Les vêpres algériennes (Algerian Vespers), by Nawel Louerrad. Published by Dalimen Éditions. You can find an excerpt of Louerrad’s work, trans. Canan Marasligil, on Words Without Borders.

Bach to Black (Bach to Black), by Nawel Louerrad. Also published by Dalimen Éditions.

Petit Polio (Little Polio) and Mémé d’Armenie (Granny from Armenia), by Farid Boudjellal. According to Warscapes, these are the first three books (Petit Polio comes in two parts) in a four-part graphic novel series based on Boudjellal’s childhood. “The author is incarnated by Mahmoud Slimani, aka Le Petit Polio, an endearing child character born of ‘a world founded and imagined’ by Boudjellal. … As a baby, Farid contracted poliomyelitis (polio) and his pudding-bowl doppelganger Mahmoud suffers from the same condition. In the first two graphic novels of the collection: Petit Polio (Little Polio) and Mémé d’Armenie (Granny from Armenia) the struggle with the scars of Polio, the fight for peer acceptance and the more everyday difficulties of childhood are told through Mahmoud’s innocent ‘eyewitness account’ against the backdrop of the War of Algerian Independence in France.” Published by Soleil. Boudjellal has many more, including, recently, Le cousin harki, Les Slimani, Les folles années de l’intégration, Le Chien à trois pattes, Les Contes du djinn, Hadj moussa, and Les années 1958/1959

Broderies pour un Hold-up (Embroidery for a Hold-up), by Mahmoud Benameur, published by Dalimen Éditions. Benameur won the prize for best graphics at the 2010 Algiers Comic Book Festival (FIBDA). Since 2011, he has continued his work as a comic artist. Some of his work can be found on the European Cultural Foundation website.

As with the other list, do add on below.

This spring, Just World Books will launch what it’s calling the “first book-length graphic work written/drawn in English by a Palestinian”:

Author-artist Leila Abdul Razzaq is a Palestinian-American college student who’s been creating her illustrated work in installments at baddawicomic.wordpress.com. You can also follow the project on Facebook.

According to the publisher:

Baddawi is a charmingly told and beautifully illustrated collection of stories about the childhood and youth of a Palestinian refugee boy, Ahmad, who grew up in the Baddawi refugee camp of northern Lebanon in the 1970s. That was a time when the flames of civil strife engulfed all the residents of Lebanon…

Many of the stories were those Abdul Razzaq heard from her father when she was growing up.

The launch is currently set for April 7, most likely in Chicago. Then:

From Chicago, we’re hoping to take this talented young author and her work to many other locales around the United States, and further afield.

If you want to go to one of her book events– or the events of any of our other authors– please sign up for our newsletter via our website, so you can get the best, latest news of the authors’ schedules. Or, if your group or congregation would like to work with us to host an event featuring this amazing young Palestinian-American, please let us know soonest, so we can try to fit it into her schedule.

Other Arab graphic novels written in English:

Arab in America, Toufic El-Rassi

Malaak, Angel of Peace, Joumana Medlej

Interestingly, this “Middle East Through Graphic Novels,” published six months ago in the Michigan Quarterly Review, has only one title written by an Arab. 

The Festival d’Angoulême — the third-largest comics festival in the world – today announced its roster of prizes, including the prestigious “best album” prize:

The prizes went to a diverse list of artists, including Chris Ware (for Building Stories), the blogger behind blickaboo.blogspot.fr, and Zhang Leping of the San Mao comics. At the top of the list, winning “best album,” was Syrian-French artist Riad Sattouf for his latest work, L’Arabe du futur: une jeunesse au Moyen-Orient (1978-1984), which is scheduled for a release in English in May.

According to English-language publisher Metropolitan Books:

The Arab of the Future, the #1 French best­seller, tells the  unforgettable story of Riad Sattouf’s childhood, spent in the shadows of 3 dictators — Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez al­Assad, and his father.

In striking, virtuoso graphic style that captures both the immediacy of childhood and the fervor of political idealism, Riad Sattouf recounts his nomadic childhood growing up in rural France, Gaddafi’s Libya, and Assad’s Syria­­but always under the roof of his father, a Syrian Pan­Arabist who drags his family along in his pursuit of grandiose dreams for the Arab nation.

Past “best album” winners include Marjane Satrapi, Chris Ware, Riad Sattouf (in 2010), Art Spiegelman, and Shaun Tan.

The festival also awarded special honors to Charlie Hebdo and launched a new freedom of expression prize. There was extra security at this year’s festival, and New York Times reported a more somber attitude.

Read:

The first ten pages online (in French)

‘The Arab of the Future': Best-selling Graphic Novel Coming to English

Recommended: 10 Arab Graphic Novels in French (two of Sattouf’s make the list)

Yesterday at Brown University, scholars and artists met for an afternoon symposium about “Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Visual Culture”:

In Nadim Damluji’s presentation — “The Violence of Localizing Western Comics for Arab Children” — he began with a slide boiling down recognizably (North) American, European, and Japanese comics. There might well have been a fourth slot on the slide with “Arab” and a question mark over it.

Damluji said that when he first began investigating Arabic comics, he saw two distinct periods in production: An early period where distinctly Arab comics were being produced and a shift in the 1960s to translated works. Damluji said that his view has changed, and that he nows sees an exchange between Arab and translated comics, noting for instance a “resistance in translation” when it came to Samir’s translation of racist moments in Tintin. But he still said that we “can’t escape the fact that American comics may have pre-empted a wholly Arab form of comics.”

After Damluji, Lina Ghaibeh spoke about an element that’s unfortunately central to many Arab comics for children: “Propaganda in Comics in the Arab World: From Nationalism To Religious Radicalism.” Ghaibeh also gave a similar talk last year, which is available on YouTube, following a path from nationalist propaganda in state-sponsored comics to religious propaganda in privately-sponsored comics by bother Christian and Muslim groups.

Saddam Hussein immortalized in a comic.

Although Arabic children’s comics began with fantasy story lines, by the 1960s and 1970s, “The idea of Arab nationalism affected every aspect of the comics,” including, Ghaibeh said, the choice of Modern Standard Arabic over a colloquial. In a more recent Jordanian Islamic comic, the “bad guys” spoke colloquial while the “good guys” used a classical Arabic.

Through the middle of the twentieth century, Arabic comics developed an immense popularity. Aware of that, Ghaibeh said, “Syria went as far as banning all comics other than their own comic, Osama.” Other comics had to be smuggled in from Lebanon.

Many Arab dictators also had comics created to celebrate their rule, including the fictionalized Saddam story at right.

Religious organizations saw the utility of comics and also began to sponsor their own. Ghaibeh showed a Maronite comic from Lebanon, as well as a number of Islamic comics from different places on the spectrum, all the way to comics that celebrated suicide bombings.

The era of the state-run comic is now over, Ghaibeh said, with the market now shifting toward independent comics of different kinds. Arabic comics magazines of the past have been reduced to mediocrity, she said. You can really see a decline of state-run children’s magazines.

So what is an Arab comic?

One of Mezher’s serialized cartoons for “Samandal.”

Lebanese comic artists Fadi Baki, one of the founders of the iconic Samandal magazine, and comics artist Fouad Mezher were also at Brown to discuss their work. Interestingly, Baki said that, “Comics in the Middle East happen in spurts; there isn’t this continuous history” as can be found in other comics traditions. What’s more, a Lebanese comic is not an Egyptian comic, nor an Algerian comic. As Ghaibeh pointed out, different countries were influenced by different traditions. Syrians, for instance, were more influenced by Russians, while Lebanese and Algerians more by French comic artists.

Censorship was raised during Baki’s talk. “There is censorship, and it’s something that we’re always worried about…and something that’s hard to talk about.”

Samandal generally avoided sex, Baki said. When they did get in trouble with the censor, they were surprised at what a trivial comment about religion it was.

After the talks, Elias Muhanna suggested that, “In Lebanon, we don’t have this issue with tremendous state censorship, because we don’t have this tremendous state.” Baki responded that. “Censorship is not even coming from the state sometimes. There is this fear..how will they react to a comic?” And, on Twitter, Lebanese literary agent Yasmina Jraissati wrote that “censorship often comes from publishers worried of not being able to sell on other markets, or from authors themselves.”

Baki again: “The state is not necessarily there as a singular state. Instead what you have is sort of anarchy and anyone who has any sort of power will shut you down. So you don’t know where you stand.”

Another thread in the discussion was whether an Arab comic written in French or English was still an Arab comic. In the end, there was no singular representation of what it meant to be an Arab comic, although hope that the Internet has allowed Arab comic artists to “see each other,” and possibly to move forward on different, organic comics styles.

Meanwhile, Egyptian cartoonists spoke to Ahram Online “about truth, utopia and self-censorship.”

“You start thinking of the repercussions of what you draw,” Mohamed Tawfiq, one of the founders of the comic magazine TokTok, told Ahram Online. Tawfiq pointed to the period between Jan. 25 2011 and the end of 2012 as the “richest period” for non-self-censored creativity.

“Exercising self-censorship is not a healthy habit,” Doaa al-Adl told the newspaper, while also saying that, at the current time, “she thinks for long bouts before she draws.”

Also, Egyptian Minister of Culture Gaber Asfour on why Egyptian censorship is the best censorship, among other things.

The second comic in Riad Sattouf’s award-winning L’Arabe du Futur series, titled L’Arabe du Futur 2,”was released in France on June 11, and is already garnering wide attention:

From Sattouf’s Twitter profile.

According to La Libre:

Son nouvel opus, dont l’histoire se déroule entre 1984 et 1985, est empli de ce qui fait la touche Sattouf : la causticité et un sens aigu de l’observation. Acerbe à l’égard du régime, des coutumes, ce Parisien de 37 ans se montre également mordant lorsqu’il représente ses proches.

According to France24, “French readers can’t seem to get enough of it – or anything, for that matter, that emerges from Sattouf’s drawing board.”

L’Arabe du Futur, which came out in 2014, was a best-seller in France and won this year’s top Fauve d’Or award at the Angoulême Festival. It will be out from Metropolitan Books in October as The Arab of the Future. 

The second book in the series, France24 reports, is 150 pages and “picks up where the first edition left the five-year-old: sobbing as his family boards a Syrian Air flight to his father’s homeland.”

Part 1 was dominated by late 1970s and early 1980s Libya, while Part 2 takes place in mid-1980s Syria.

Riva Hocherman, executive editor of Metropolitan Books, told France24:

Sattouf gives a rich, inside perspective of a world that we never get to see. And it’s one that registers with all the more authenticity because it comes from the non-judgmental view of a child. Add to that the sly humor, the vivid picture of Riad’s complicated father and family, the all-oppressive presence of cruel dictatorships, and you have one of the great stories of childhood.

More:

La Libre with Riad Sattouf: ‘I have a tremendous affection for Tintin, its paradoxes and excesses’ (French)

France24: Comic books of childhood under Arab dictators grip France

The award-winning author-illustrator Zeina Abirached was born in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War and, although she’s made numerous books as a cartoonist and illustrator, she keeps returning to the Civil War and the vanished Beirut that was razed and rebuilt after the war’s end, which is as much a character as it is a location in her work. 

Alex Dueben talked to Abirached about this city, absent and present:  

Abirached’s two graphic novels which have been translated into English, A Game for Swallows, especially, and I Remember Beirut, which was published in the United States last year, show her trying to depict the city and to express a child’s vision of what happened during the war, not so much for the purposes of memoir but to reclaim a history that has been largely ignored or avoided by those constructing official histories. Her black and white artwork, like with Arabic calligraphy, is concerned with the interplay of vacuity and presence and she spoke recently about her work, memory, and researching the historical Beirut.

I Remember Beirut just came out, and it’s a very different book from A Game for Swallows, which is also about Beirut and growing up during the Civil War.

I didn’t plan to write I Remember Beirut. I was doing something at the time and some memories came back to me and it was very urgent to express them so I started to write small stories about the things I remembered. I was reading Georges Perec, he’s a famous French author, who wrote a book Je me souviens. It’s a bit like Joe Brainard’s I Remember. The book of Georges Perec is a list of many memories. Each sentence begins with “I remember” so it’s short sentences about his personal memories and the memories of his generation. At the end of the book he leaves three or four white pages with a note that if the readers want to write their own “I remember” they can do it on those white pages, so I started to write mine. I suddenly realized that I didn’t have enough space to write everything so I decided to write a book. There are many differences and many things in common. You already know some of the characters from A Game for Swallows. It’s about memories of my childhood and teenage years.

As Georges Perec did there are a lot of memories that are particular to my generation like Florence Griffith Joyner or RC Cola. My brother is younger and I think even his generation missed this. It’s very particular to my the people who are my age.

Like the sound of cassette tapes.

Yes! Every time I show the book to kids in schools I have to explain what is a cassette. [laughs]

A panel from “I Remember Beirut.” Courtesy of Abirached.

You end the book in 2006 during the Israeli invasion and being in France and hearing from your parents about the bombing. I wondered if that was the beginning of the book because it felt like that was where it started in a sense.

In this book I’m telling the story as if something is gone – like Beirut is gone – and in A Game for Swallows there is a lot of tenderness, as if I wanted to keep Beirut alive. In I Remember, even the title it’s as if it’s already past. I don’t know. In the French version the pages are not numbered. I wanted the reader to start the book anywhere. I’m not sure it started with the 2006 bombing. The first memory was the one about the first time we went to the Western side of Beirut. This is the first one I wrote. I was talking to a friend that day and I realized I remembered that the first time we went to West Beirut with my parents. I felt like I was in a foreign country and for the first two days I completely lost my mother tongues. I completely lost Arabic and French and I started to speak with everyone in English. I didn’t really speak English but I felt like I had to use a foreign language. I was 11, I think. It took me two days to realize that I was still in the same country–in the same city. I realized that I had to get to know the city after the war. We used to live in a very small place that was very protected and we couldn’t go to the other side. Once I was able to go to the other side I felt like I had to know everything about this other side.

I’m sure that your parents were trying to shield you from the war as much as they could while still keeping you safe. What has it been like for them to read your books?

[laughs] My mom was like “oh my god we did everything we could but it didn’t work. She remembers everything!” She was very upset. At first they were a bit surprised to see that there were so many things that I remembered, but I think it was also good for everyone to finally talk about it. Once I wrote this book we finally could talk about it as if it it was about our pasts. I think this was important for them–and for me of course–just to say, this happened and we can talk about it. It was difficult for me in A Game for Swallows to draw my parents and to make them talk. I don’t feel like they are the main characters. Do you feel that? I think it’s more about Beirut and everyday life and those people and it’s about this family, but we don’t really know who they are.

I think that’s true. There’s so much detail about the experience, but the book also gives the sense that it’s not unique. That something very similar is happening in almost every building on both sides of the city.

When I signed books in Beirut the first time, someone told me, we lived exactly the same, but on the other side. He was living in West Beirut. This was very important for me to see that we can connect with our memories. In Lebanon we really don’t talk about the Civil War. In school, the history books stop in the sixties.

You’re visiting Beirut right now, from your perspective, how has city changed in recent years?

A lot of things changed but a couple of months ago do you remember the graffiti in A Game for Swallows with the line from Florian [which gave the book its title]? This wall was torn down and for me it was very weird to come back and not to see this wall and the graffiti. Of course the city is changing and a lot of the old buildings are disappearing. I feel like we are losing–it’s too strong to say that–but it feels like we are losing our identity. Now the city is beautiful but I feel like it doesn’t belong to the people who are from here. There is an economic gap also – like everywhere – this is not special to Beirut. When I saw the wall of Florian has been destroyed I felt like the Beirut of my childhood and the Beirut I knew was completely gone. It’s not only about nostalgia, it’s also about what is replacing the things that were so particular to the city. I feel I’m too pessimistic.

From Agatha de beyrouth, which Abirached drew live in Beirut in front of an audience. Courtesy of Abirached.

You’re seeing Beirut becoming more of a generic city.

There is also the war in Syria, which is very close to us. There are a lot of Syrian refugees as you know in Lebanon and Beirut so we also have a social crisis. It’s something you really feel when you’re here. You feel this new atmosphere. It’s contrasted with the new buildings and towers. We only have four hours of electricity in Beirut. Of course there a lot of generators, so we don’t even feel when there is no electricity. Some people are building this very luxurious, generic city you can find in Dubai or wherever. On the other side there is a social crisis and people who don’t have any place to go and refugees. It’s difficult to accept this. Right now I’m writing a story which takes place in Beirut in the sixties. I’m going back to the Beirut of my grandfathers before the war and I’m trying to have a thread between my childhood and the Beirut before I was born. I feel like I make books to try to understand what happened and what we still have.

You’ve made a number of books in France that haven’t been translated into English or come out in the United States. There’s your kids book Mouton, which is a great book about having curly hair. You seem to also make a lot of illustrations.

I need a lot of time to make comics so I also do illustrations for books or newspapers or magazines or posters for music festivals.

I illustrated a book with a French author Jacques Jouet. He wrote and I drew this book in three days in public in Beirut. It was an improvisation. We were sitting next to each other. He had his computer on which he began the story and I had a screen where I saw what he wrote and I had to illustrate this text live. It was like a performance. Eight hours per day for three days in public. It was great. Jacques is a member of the French literature school Oulipo with George Perec.

From Agatha de beyrouth, which Abirached drew live in Beirut in front of an audience. Courtesy of Abirached.

How did that happen?

We were invited and they asked us to do that!

Sometimes I draw with musicians live in concert. It’s very interesting for me to go out of my studio and change my habits and draw in another way. When I work in my studio I’m alone and when I draw my books the style has a lot of detail. Live drawing with musicians or with Jacques was more instinctive drawing.

You mentioned that the book you’re making now is about Beirut in the sixties. What has it been like doing that and what’s the relationship between that and your other books?

It’s very different this time because it’s not autobiographical. It’s about the invention of a musical instrument in 1955 in Beirut. It’s my grandfather who invented it. It’s a piano. It’s a normal piano but when you play the piano it’s magical because it’s able to play music with quarter tones. I don’t know if you’re familiar with it but the construction of music in occidental music you have the space between each note is a tone or half a tone and in oriental music it’s a quarter tone. If you’re talking about the piano it’s as if there is not enough keys. He added a pedal which can switch all the strings inside the piano and so once you use this pedal you pass to oriental music and once you release the pedal it’s a normal piano. I really love this thing because it’s a bit of a bilingual instrument. I found it very interesting. It’s the story of this invention and how he went to Vienna to construct it and how he couldn’t really do it, actually, but I’m not going to tell the end of the book.

We still have the prototype he constructed in Vienna at my grandfather’s place. Because it’s in the fifties and sixties, it’s like a myth for us. I wonder if the Beirut of the sixties ever existed. [laughs] I mean it exists in our grandfathers’ memories but I feel like I need to know this era of Beirut. Right now I’m drawing downtown Beirut in the sixties so everything I’m drawing does not exist anymore. It’s very weird because of course I have a lot of pictures but it’s strange to draw the cinema for two days, with its very nice facade, and realize that I took two days to draw something that we don’t have a trace of anymore except for pictures and stories. That why I told you I wonder if it ever existed because it’s a bit like a myth and something that is too seems impossible now this place has existed.

Yes and that myth goes something like, Beirut was the Paris of the East, people from around the world studied at American University of Beirut and everyone got along and then all of a sudden there was this long, brutal civil war. There’s obviously something missing from that story.

Yes! My story stops in 1975 at the first day of the war. The main character in real life died in 1975 just before the war started, so he died thinking things would never change and things would always be like this. He died with the end of this era, and it’s a good way for me to get to know this period of time in Beirut.

Alex Dueben has written on books, comics and art for a number of publications including The Paris Review, The Believer, The Rumpus, The Comics Journal and The Daily Beast.

Following in the footsteps of Samandal and Toktok, among others, “Twins Cartoon” — the pen name of cartoonists Mohamed and Haitham Rafaat — has launched Egypt’s newest collective comic book, Garage:

From Design Indaba.

“The name Garage was born out of the project being an underground, independent production, like we are starting from the bottom, then going up and out to the world,” Haitham Raafat told Ahram Online.

The magazine launched Friday night at Townhouse Gallery in downtown Cairo. There are now several major pop-literary comics in Cairo alone, including Toktok, Garage, and Shakmagia.

According to Design Indaba, the indentical twins behind Garage graduated with twin degrees in fine arts in 2008, since which time they’ve worked both drawing and teaching the art of comics. They founded Kawkab al-Rasameen, or Planet of Artists, in 2014, and that led to Garage.

Haitham told Design Indaba earlier this year: “Before the revolution in 2011 comics in Egypt were a copy of French comics, with only a little of the culture of Egypt. After the revolution comics became popular among teenagers. Artists in Egypt can now express social topics that affect Egyptian people, especially the poor.”

From Design Indaba.

The first issue of Garage, Haitham told Ahram Online, includes 12 projects “from a mix of unknown artists with others who are better established, to balance it out.” The launch issue also features a number of female artists, including Sara Khaled, Doaa El-Adl, and Aliaa Aly.

Although there are contributions from Lebanon, Morocco, Jordan, and Syria, Haitham told AO that they “take care to make other Arabic dialects readable for an Egyptian audience.”

According to Design Indaba, “The teenage crowds are their most popular audience.”

The twins have also helped found the Cairo Comix Festival, set to be held this September 30 – October 2. “Preparing for this festival we felt there are so many great artists who are unknown that we wanted to help showcase,” Haitham told Ahram Online.

The magazine will initially come out tri-monthly, with hopes to move it up to monthly.

More:

Ahram Online: New comic book Garage features Egyptian and Arab artists

Design Indaba: Egyptian twins bring comic love to Cairo

Design Indaba: “Garage” is a new comic magazine from a collective of Arabic artists

Starting September 30 and running through October 3, Egyptian comics artists Shennawy (co-founder of TokTok), Magdy ElShafee (author of Metro), and Twins Cartoon (the force behind Garage) will launch Egypt’s first-ever comics fest:

It will be a counterpoint to the big Festival International de la Bande Dessinée d’Alger (FIBDA), , set this year for October 6-10. The Algerian festival is now in its eighth year, and has attracted comix artists from around the world. FIBDA has given awards to some of the best in Arabic comics, including Egypt’s TokTok. The festival just announced the winners of their national contest; a jury meets this month to decide on the winners of their international awards.

The all-new Cairo Comix Fest will also present six awards: for Best Published Graphic Novel, Best Short Comics Story, Best Printed Magazine, Best Press Comic Strip, Best Digital Comics Series, and Best Project in Progress.

The full program isn’t yet available, but you can follow the festival on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/CairoComix.

Translator Valentina Viene profiles “Muslim Libyan Arab British graphic novelist” Asia Alfasi, who has moved from writing about her identity to, more broadly, life in Libya and Scotland:

By Valentina Viene 

Image by Alfasi.

In a world of opposing ideologies and intense scrutiny, critically thinking individuals must often migrate to an imaginary world to express their ideas. For writers with a message, fiction offers that free space where they can create their own scenarios and explore their own ideas. While new genres like science fiction are gaining increasing visibility, Arab graphic novels and comics remain relatively unknown to the Anglophone readership, although comics are familiar to both audiences. As a genre, comics have the advantage of facilitating communication, thanks to the cross-cultural overlaps.

Comics and cartoons are by no means new to the Arab world. The “Sindibad” series for children were already popular in 1950’s Egypt, and the Middle East has long used cartoons as an invective against oppression. Now, these traditions are coming to public attention in the West. For instance, some of these cartoons and cartoonists were showcased at the Shubbak Festival in London last July.

One of the emerging voices in the world of comics is Asia Alfasi, a young but prolific artist based in Birmingham who describes herself as a “Muslim Libyan Arab British graphic novelist.” Alfasi’s story of how she came to manga cartoons is quite unique. At the age of eight she moved from Tripoli, Libya, where she was born, to Glasgow, Scotland. At school, she struggled at establishing relationships with her peers. The cultural distance was a great obstacle for her, and Alfasi was bullied.

From Alfasi’s “Hijabstrips.”

Outside of school hours, she would watch manga cartoons and draw. Then something happened that changed her life. Her classmates discovered that she could draw manga, and draw  well, too. She suddenly became popular and children started respecting her. She not only managed to “subdue a monster,” to use Alfasi’s own words, and pull down those walls of fear, but she felt that her drawings could influence the world.

Her intimate relationship with drawing has resulted in recognition. Her work was included in the Mammoth Book of Best New Manga in 2006, alongside artists of international reputation. “The non-savvy non-commuter” was displayed on the walls of the Piccadilly Circus tube station on its 100th anniversary in 2006, a year after London was left in shock by the 7/7 terrorist attack. It talks about a Muslim girl from Scotland, Ewa, who uses the London underground after a long time. She very quickly becomes a commuter’s nightmare because of her clumsiness. She joins a childhood friend, Yasmin, who in seven years of living in London has dramatically changed in looks, such that Ewa does not recognize her. A discussion between the two follows, where Ewa expresses her astonishment at Yasmin’s transformation. Yasmin calls it “tactical re-branding” to adapt to her new environment. Ewa disagrees with her and asks her friend to look at the people in the underground and notice how their differences come together to make a beautiful symphony. And the fact that Ewa wears a hijab means that her identity is represented in the crowd.

While Alfasi’s first pieces were focused on her personal experiences, the Arab Spring has taken her work in different directions. She returned to visit Libya in January 2011, but with the uprising against Gaddafi, she ended up staying for a year or more. During that period, she encountered first-hand the horrors of war and the victims of the Gaddafi era.

When she decided to write about Libya, her parents tried to dissuade her, since two of her uncles had already been imprisoned then killed for being too vocal under Gaddafi. For a while, she left her new project, but then felt compelled to recount those stories, which, after her stay in Libya, had found new meaning. These stories inspired Alfasi to write her first semi-autobiographical novel which is soon to be published by Bloomsbury USA. Alfasi harnesses the fact that she is an in-betweener. She has realized that she can talk about Libya and Scotland from an insider’s perspective and “give each culture a chance to look at themselves through the eyes of a person who has lived there first as a national and then almost as a newcomer.”

Alfasi’s message is a message of optimism, and that words can change the world. If manga helped her gain acceptance in her school, surely, she suggests, this will contribute to a reduction in the distance between the West and other cultures.

“The moment,” she says, “you step away from stupid generalizations and predictable stereotyping, you suddenly enter the realm of intriguing stories that will add and benefit and teach you and enlighten people.”

In “Hijabstrip,” a white girl is caught by surprise when she first enters her Muslim friend’s bedroom. She has Bruce Lee posters hanging on her walls. She opens her friend’s wardrobe and discovers that she has some really fancy dresses. Her eyes almost pop out when she realizes that not only is her friend not covering her head with a scarf, but that her hair is blue! The Muslim girl teaches her friend not to judge by appearances. She also wears a Pikachu pyjama and takes part in Karate tournaments.

The artist describes her work as “a cultural blend of extraordinary tales.” Her work is truly extraordinary: she is among the the first Arab artists to have introduced Muslim characters in the manga world, as well as legends and myths of which the Libyan culture is so replete. She also has sense of humour, which makes her stories a pleasure to read. Her re-adaptation of Juha’s traditional tales to comics, for example, is brilliant and can be read on her Facebook page, both in Arabic and English.

Currently, she is also working on a project to turn a theatrical piece, “Looking for yoghurt,” into a graphic novel. She is writing a third story, “The Adventures of Joseph and Jasmine” which should be published soon. Because of her bilingualism, her work is accessible to a great variety of readers, which will no doubt bring her a wide audience.

Valentina Viene is a translator from Arabic into English and Italian and a literary scout focusing on contemporary Arabic literature. A graduate of the Orientale, Naples, she has translated a number of Arab authors and her articles have appeared in Italian academic journals and blogs. She has lived in and around the MENA region for several years. 

If you’re interested in Arab comix, don’t miss Elias Muhanna’s “The Fate of a Joke in Lebanon”

The debut CairoComix Festival has entered its second day, and while some reports have its organization a little rough around the edges, it’s been packed with enthusiasts. Its first set of awards surprised comix-watchers by going to a majority of women artists:

Image from @QSuperhero

The six initial awards were given at a closed ceremony Wednesday night, and more than half went to women.

As artist Deena Mohamed tweeted last night, Best Digital Comic went to her Qahera, which features a female “visibly Muslim” superhero fighting injustice in Cairo.

The Best Graphic Novel award went to Egyptian artist Hanan al-Karargy for her graphic novelization of popular sci fi author Ahmed Khaled Tawfik’s Locust Effect. 

Best Comics Magazine, meanwhile, went not to Egypt’s TokTok, which won a similar award at Algeria’s big comix festival, but to Tunisian artist Noha Habib for Makhbar 916.

Best Work in Progress went to Riham Husseiny for an untitled project.

As Mada Masr reported, male artists didn’t entirely lose out: Best Short Story went to Migo for his Angels Sleep in the Sea, and Best Comic Strip in a Newspaper to Amr El-Tarouty and Ahmed Okasha.

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In a report that first appeared on Egyptian Streets, Tine Lavent writes about the opening of the festival: 

By Tine Lavent

From October 1 till 3, comic enthusiasts in Cairo are in for a treat at the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) Greek Campus. From talks to workshops, comic book sales and exhibitions, the CairoComix Festival, the capital’s newest comic fair, will put past and present Arabic comics under the spotlight.

According to Jonathan Guyer, who could be dubbed as the Egyptian Cartoon and Comic Expert, the comic scene in Egypt is doing more than well. “As ever, Egypt’s comic scene is bustling,” he wrote on his blog in August 2015. “Some recent developments: Makhlouf’s Martian portrait drawing hangout, Mohamed Wahba Elshenawy’s comic classes, a ‘zine called Garage, and the Ministry of Culture’s touring political cartoon gallery.” A while back, in September 2014, Mohamed El Baaly (owner of Sefsafa Publishing House) had set up the Egypt Comix Week for the first time.

isitor inspect excerpts from the release and book signing event of the comic book Hadath Bel Fe’l in February 2015.

As a seemingly natural continuation to the activity on the comics scene, CairoComix builds up on these positive developments. The first edition of the festival “aspires to promote the growth of visual art entertainment, and create a nurturing environment that entertains the audience and fosters the development of an Arabic comics ecosystem,” reads its statement.

Bringing the festival to life, Mohammed Shennawy, Magdy ElShafee, and Twins Cartoon are the artists behind the three-day comic fest.

“The idea had already started to grow in 2014. We wanted to create chances for independent artists and publishing houses,” Mohamed Raafat el-Seht, who shares the Twins Cartoon artist name with his brother Haitham, explains. “The comic scene in Egypt has grown particularly after the revolution in 2011. It’s getting better and better, and we would like to see it grow even further. Several initiatives, magazines, and fairs have been popping up. That’s only good news for the comic scene here.”

Tac Au Tac Challenge at CairoComix.

However, CairoComix raises the bar in comparison to previous comic fairs and fests, the creative twin says. “It’s the first time a comics event in Egypt has such an international comic book market. We have people from the French Cultural Institute, the Japan Foundation, and Egyptian artists. What is different from the Egypt Comix Week for instance is that we have an open air market, for both children and grown-ups.”

Among the international guests is Mohamed Amine Bellaoui of the Casablanca-based Skefkef Magazine, which first appeared in 2014. “We’re a team of young people. Every once in a while, we send out a call for young Arab artists to draw for the next edition of our fanzine. One is selected to come to Morocco and stay for ten to fifteen days for an artistic residency. The first was Mohammed Shenawy from Egypt, followed by a Tunisian artist, and our fourth guest, Okacha, also came from Egypt.”

Okacha giving a talk at the 2015 Skefkef workshop in Morocco.

“Skefkef is the name of a sandwich in Casablanca. It looks disgusting. It contains beans and bowels, and you can’t really tell what its texture is made from. But it’s delicious. Just like Casablanca. It’s a metaphor we chose to make. The magazine discusses life in the city from the point of view of people from inside and outside Morocco. It shows how they look at the city and what they like about it.”

The Moroccan artist thinks a fair like CairoComix can serve a number of purposes. “The most important thing is that it allows artists from the Arab world to get to know each other, and to exchange experiences and ideas.” The Arabic comic scene is in need of networking, he says. “Comics are a literary subgenre. They can be attractive to a public that does not read a lot in particular. Images offer an alternative way to written forms in order to get a story across. Every artist does that in his own way, with a different result.”

“If we go to a European or American comic fair in the current times, they look at Arabic comics as something exotic,” Mohamed Amine Bellaoui argues. He further explains how comic fairs like CairoComix are beneficial to strengthen bonds and stimulate work. “We have to distinguish ourselves so that we wouldn’t be considered as something exotic but as an integral part of the international comic book industry.”

The CairoComix program contains several exhibitions, a competition with six awards (Best Published Graphic Novel, Best Short Comics Story, Best Printed Magazine, Best Press Comic Strip, Best Digital Comics Series, and Best Project in Progress), workshops, and a cosplay event at AUC’s Greek Campus. In addition, a forum on Arabic comics will be held, dubbed On the Roofs.

Entrance to the CairoComix Festival is free.

Follow the fest:

On the CairoComix Facebook page.

At these Twitter accounts: @mideastXmidwest, @CairoComix, and @TheAhmedRaafat.

CairoComix closes today (there are some great photos at @CairoComix), and it’s a heady time for the Arabic graphic novel. Lena Merhej’s Murabba wa laban — or Jam and Yoghurt, or Laban et confiture — will soon become the first full-length graphic novel to be translated from Arabic and published in the French by a French publishing house:

The translation, by Simona Gabrieli, will soon come out from Gabrieli’s own publishing house, Alifabata. The biographical graphic novel tells the story of Merhej’s mother and how she “became Lebanese.”

Merhej’s mother is an Austrian woman who fell in love with a Lebanese man, Merhej’s father. Samandal published an early excerpt, which you can read in Arabic or English.

Gabrieli recently gave an interview (L’intervista alla traduttrice) with the Italian Arabook, which the magazine’s Maria Laura Romani translated from Italian to English. 

First of all, what’s the story of your publishing house?

Read a rundown of what’s been happening with Lebanon’s Samandal magazine in The Guardian and find the magazine’s crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo:

From The Guardian:

A Lebanese satirical comic last week threw what may prove to be either its final launch party – or the first of its resurrection. The event marked Samandal magazine’s attempt to crowdfund its way out of oblivion after three of its editors were convicted of crimes against religion and fined for their work, nearly putting the experimental comics collective out of business.

For five years, editors of the Beirut-based magazine kept fairly quiet about their legal troubles.

In 2010, editors Omar Khouri, Hatem Imam, and Fadi Baki were charged with “inciting sectarian strife”, “denigrating religion”, “publishing false news” and “defamation and slander” for two comics that appeared in the seventh issue of Samandal.

“Our lawyer said that this was an absurd case and we’d definitely win it in court,” Baki told the Guardian by email. “He wasn’t too excited about having the media publicising it because he didn’t want it to affect what he thought would be an easy decision for the judges.”

The case dragged on for five years, after which the three were surprised to be found guilty. Within two weeks, they’d lost an appeal.

Keep reading.

See more about the crowdfunding campaign.

On the heels of the first annual CairoComix festival, the American University of Beirut will host its first annual Symposium on Arabic Comics on Nov. 16, also celebrating the winners of the new Mahmoud Kahil Award:

Image from the AUB website.

As Jonathan Guyer writes at Oum Cartoon, the event is framed around “personal narratives and memoir,” and brings together comic artists from Egypt, France, Lebanon, Palestine, and the US. Winners of the Mahmoud Kahil Award will also be announced; the new award promises to “recognize great Arab talents in the field of comics, editorial cartoons and illustration.”

According to the award’s Facebook page, the award received more than 750 submissions from Palestine, Egypt, Lebanon, Tunisia, Syria, Jordan, Sudan, Qatar, Libya, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Morocco, and Algeria. You can also follow @KahilAward for updates.

Comix events are set to begin at 11 a.m. in Dar Al Handasah Shair and Partners Architecture Lecture Hall. The schedule from the AUB:

1. Personal narrative of war: Reshaping of an identity
GEORGE KHOURY JAD | Comics and Animation Artist, writer and critic
George Khoury (JAD), Comics Artist, Comics critic and Animator since the 80s. Lecturer at the Lebanese American University in digital media, and head of the Animation Department at Future Television since its launch in 1993. His artworks and movies have been featured in many local and international instances and festivals. His Comics “Shahrazad” is acquired by The National Museum of Comics in (France/Angoûlème). Co-founder of the “Lebanese Syndicate of Professional Graphic Designers, Illustrators and Animators”, he earned several awards for his artwork and filmography. Author of the “History of Arabic Comics” in addition to several essays and articles related to Art, Comics and Animation.

2. Making Death Visible: War in Lebanese Graphic Memoir
NADIM DAMLOUJI | Tintintologist
Nadim Damluji researches and writes about the history of Arab comics. As a 2010 Thomas J. Watson Fellow, he traced the colonial impact of Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin by retracing Tintin’s footsteps through the Middle East, Europe, and Asia. Nadim has lectured and published his work on comics throughout the United States and Middle East. In 2015, he co-curated the exhibit “Arab Comics: 90 Years of Popular Visual Culture” based on his work for Brown University. Currently, Nadim is completing a Juris Doctorate at the University of Washington in Seattle with a focus on international business and human rights.

3. How I became a Lebanese Comics Artist
LENA MERHEJ, PhD in visual studies | Comics artist and teacher??
Lena Merhej (PhD) is a visual storyteller and an expert in graphic narratives in the interdisciplinary field of visual studies, narratology, and computer science. She previously taught at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University, and gave various workshops on animation, illustration and comic books. Her animation Drawing the War (2002), her comic book Another year (2009), and her book Mraba we Laban (Yogurt and Jam, 2011) received international awards. She is a co-founder and contributing member of the comics magazine Samandal.

4. The Arab of the Future, or the Future of Arab Comics
JONATHAN GUYER  Fellow, Institute of Current World Affairs; Blogger, Oum Cartoon.
Jonathan Guyer is an Institute of Current World Affairs fellow focusing on the intersection of art, mass media, and satire in the Middle East and North Africa. He has been living in Egypt since 2012, where he is a contributing editor of the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, a policy journal published by the American University in Cairo. From 2012 to 2013, he served as a Fulbright fellow researching political cartoons in Egypt. A frequent analyst on Public Radio International and France 24, he has contributed to Guernica, The New Yorker, The Paris Review Daily, New York Magazine, Harvard University’s Nieman Reports, The Guardian, Jadaliyya, Mada Masr, and others. His research on Egyptian satire has been cited by the Associated Press, CNN, The Economist, New Statesman, Reuters, and TIME, among other international news outlets. He blogs about Arabic comics and caricature at Oum Cartoon: oumcartoon.tumblr.com.

5. Preserving Palestinian History Through Graphic Memoir
LEILA ABDOUL RAZZAK | Author and Comics artist
Leila is a Chicago-based, Palestinian author, artist, and organizer. She graduated from DePaul University in 2015 with a BFA in Theatre Arts and a BA in Arabic Studies. She has been involved in both national and local community organizing around the issue of Palestine since 2011. Leila was a participant in the 2015 Palestine Festival of Literature. Her debut graphic novel, Baddawi, was recently shortlisted for the Palestine Book Awards.

6. Testifying, a new form of personal narrative in Comics
OLIVIER KOCH | Research professor, member of LabSic (Université Paris 13) & research associate at the IRMC (Tunisia).
Olivier Koch is a researcher in media studies and a professor at Galatasaray University. He is a member of LabSic (Université Paris 13) and research associate at the IRMC (Tunis). He previously taught at the University Paris 13, the University Paris 2 and Sciences-Po Paris. Part of his work focuses on memory and testimony issues.

7. In the backstage of an Egyptian graphic novel-metro
MAGDY EL SHAFEE | Comics artist – president of CairoComix festival
Egyptian award-winning comics writer & illustrator. In 2007 he won the best African comics (Afro-Mediterranean) with Author Wael Saad. In 2008, he released “Metro”, contemporary Egyptian graphic novel that made a buzz on the comics scene in Egypt. Translated to Italian, German and English, and mentioned in “1001 Comics you must read before you die” book released in 2012. He founded (ElDoshma) comics magazine-2012, and publishes in Zenith (German) and World War 3-illustrated  (USA).

8. DRAWING THE STREET
MOHAMAD SHENNAWY |Egypt| Comics artist, founder of 9th Art Magazine and Co founder of TOKTOK Magazine
Born in Cairo 1978, Shennawy studied applied arts, and has been since working in advertising. Since early in 2011 he founded with 5 other artists the comics magazine for adults TokTok, and continues to work as a freelance artist, graphic designer and manager of The 9th Art Foundation in Cairo.

Thursday, January 28, the winners of the inaugural Mahmoud Kahil Awards were announced in Beirut:

Rada Sawwaf speaking about the power of comics at the debut Mahmoud Kahil Award ceremony.

The main awards were presented in five categories: Editorial cartoons, graphic narratives, comic strips, graphic illustrations & infographics, and children’s book illustrations.

Winners included Jordanian Amjad Rasmi, who took the Editorial-cartoon Prize; Egyptians Ahmad Nady, Ganzeer, and Donia Maher took the Graphic Novel Prize for The Apartment in Bab El Louk; Jordanian Mohamad Al-Muti took the comic strips prize for “The Handsome Sad Mysterious Man”; Lebanese illustrator Bahij Jaroudi took the Graphic Illustration category for “Last Breath”; and the winner in the Children’s Book Illustrations category was Lebanese illustrator Azza Hussein. 

Samples of their work, and interviews with the artists, can be found by clicking on their names.

There was also an Arabic Comics Guardian Award, which went to Egypt’s TokTok magazine and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Syrian artist Loujaina al-Assil.

According to organizers, there were 200 submissions from eleven different countries. They were judged by seven jury members: Patrick Chapatte, Imad Hajjaj, Jihad el-Khazen, George Khoury, Majdi Ashafi’, Michelle Standjosfski, and Habib Haddad.

The growing number of awards for Arab comics and graphic novels — at International Comics Book Festival of Algeria (FIBDA); at the Cairo Comix Festival; and now as part of the Arab Comics Initiative at the American University in Beirut — amply demonstrates the vibrancy of the Arabic comix scene.

The film that played at the awards ceremony (with English subtitles):

You can find more:

At the twitter feeds @KahilAward and @kahilcartoons.

Jonathan Guyer’s Oum Cartoon recently ran a discussion between Guyer and Egyptian artist Ganzeer about what’s new in the worlds of Arabic comix. Over at Arab Hyphen, Tasnim Qutait posted up a panel that was part of the Casa Árabe exhibition Pens and Cartoons: Arab Comics in Motion. And, of course, yesterday winners of the inaugural Mahmoud Kahil Awards were announced:

Art by Lena Merhej. From Casa Árabe.

Guyer and Ganzeer talk about the boom in Egyptian comix publishing in the last five to ten years, from the publication of Metro (2008) to everything happening now on the widely varied scene. They also discussed other comix and graphic-novelling hotspots, including Beirut, Tunis, Casablanca, and beyond.

Guyer said, about what’s different about Arabic comix, vs. those elsewhere:

The concept of the comix zine collective — which we are seeing in Egypt, Lebanon, Morocco, and Tunisia — has probably fallen out of fashion in the US. But across the Arab region, this is where the edgiest stuff is being published right now.

And also:

…in terms of political cartoons and caricature, I think what’s happening in Egypt is much more dynamic and compelling than the cartoons published in the Western press— but that’s another story.

Over at Arab Hyphen, Qutait talks about a Casa Árabe panel discussion that featured Lebanese animation and comics artist Lina Ghaibeh and Tunisian comics author and illustrator Issam Smiri. The two spoke about “the history of Arab comics and the current comics boom in the Arab world.”

Their talk coincides with the exhibition Pens and Cartoons: Arab Comics in Motion, which says it aims to provide an “overview of current comics and graphic novels in the Arab world through 23 works produced from 2007 to 2015, all very representative of the creative response by Arab writers and illustrators to the social and political transformations occurring over the last decade.”

The exhibition runs through Feb 7.

Also, don’t miss:

Lebanese comics artist and graphic novelist Mazen Kerbaj recently sent out an email that includes comics newly translated and published online. They include:

In Search for a Subject – A Hypothetical Reportage by Mazen Kerbaj (2014)
Originally published in German in Swiss magazine Strapazin.

Flap Flap (2010)
Kerbaj: “Originally published in French in my book Lettre à la mère (2013 – L’Apocalypse). This one will be published online on the 1st of February on the website Words Without Borders (where many of my short stories are already published in English; check them out here if you didn’t know about them).”

The Egyptian artist Ganzeer (the pen name of Mohamed Fahmy), co-winner of a Mahmoud Kahil Award for his work on The Apartment in Bab el-Louk, has announced that his first full-length, solo graphic novel, The Solar Grid, will start rolling out on April 15: 

Ganzeer made the announcement on his “Restricted Frequency” email newsletter, where he wrote:

SFOGN is actually titled: THE SOLAR GRID. It’s a black and white sci-fi (cli-fi?) graphic novel in 9 chapters. I’ll be releasing each chapter on a bi-monthly basis in PDF format. Easily readable on desktop or iPad, but definitely looks particularly good on the iPad. Downloadable for no more than $1.99. First chapter (32+ pages) hits the web in 6 weeks. That’s April 15. Where? TheSolarGrid.net

The plan is after completion of the THE SOLAR GRID (estimate: July 2017) to release a quality hardcopy trade edition. It’ll include things not in the online chapters, but the online chapters will also include things not in the hardcopy trade edition. Let’s see how this goes.

Over at the new website, you can find out a bit more about The Solar Grid, which is:

…a B&W serialized graphic novel written and illustrated by Ganzeer.  It follows the story of two children, Mehret and Kameen, who scavange the wastelands of Earth for valuables from the civilizations that came before. They stumble upon material from Earth’s past that will forever change its future. Not just Earth’s future, but the future of Mars as well.

You can also follow Ganzeer at http://www.ganzeer.com/

Images from Hamid Sulaiman’s graphic-novel debut — released this month in Paris — are on display at Galerie Crone in Berlin through June 18, 2016:

In both Paris and Berlin, AFP reports that the Syrian artist’s first book is being met with acclaim.

Sulaiman’s story centers around a clandestine “Freedom Hospital,” founded by a peace activist named Yasmine in an unnamed Syrian city. In addition to Yasmine, there are ten other characters living in the hospital, both the sick and their caregivers, reflecting different segments of Syrian society: a Kurd, an Alawite, a Franco-Syrian journalist, members of the Free Syrian Army, and a radical Islamist.

But not all the blame is placed with Syrians. Sulaiman told AFP that he took care to “always note where all the weaponry comes from — Russia, the US, France… because war is a business too[.]”

According to the website Artitious, Sulaiman has been working on the comic since he fled Damascus in 2011 — after spending a week in prison and being unexpectedly released.

AFP calls the novel “[b]y turns harrowing, heart-breaking and funny,” and says the book is dedicated to the author’s “best friend Hussam Khayat who was tortured to death by Bashar al-Assad’s secret police three years ago.”

“‘Freedom Hospital’ is my point of view,” Sulaiman told AFP. “I don’t try to be neutral and I cannot be. This is a homage to the people who have tried to do something, to help others.”

Erika Clugston noted, in her review of the graphic-novel art, which is in display in Berlin, that “the speech bubbles in the comic-style drawings have been left without text for the purposes of the exhibition, allowing the images to speak for themselves. In the empty speech bubbles we can imagine the words exchanged between characters and relate to their situations as we fill in our own text.”

The Berlin-based CORRECTIV recently announced two graphic novel fellowships for artists; one for artists from the Middle East and one for artists from subsaharan Africa. Also, the Beirut-based Mahmoud Kahil Award just opened submissions for comics artists, editorial cartoonists, and illustrators “from the Arab World”:

The CORRECTIV fellowships are for a six-month residence in Berlin. Each fellow, according to the CORRECTIV website, “will receive free housing, roughly 10.000 Euro for expenses for living in Berlin for six months, and the flights to and from Berlin.”

Also:

Each fellow will work with us in our newsroom on one of our investigation to transfer it into a graphic novel. After the end of the fellowship we will publish the novel as a book as part of our publishing activities – and we will publish it on our website, so that everybody can have access to the work.

Meanwhile, artists are encouraged to submit for the second annual Mahmoud Kahil Awards in five categories:

• USD $10,000 in the category of Editorial Cartoons
• USD $10,000 in the category of Graphic Novels
• USD $6,000 in the category of Comic Strips
• USD $5,000 in the category of Graphic Illustrations
• USD $5,000 in the category of Children’s Book Illustrations

Winners last year included Jordanian Amjad Rasmi, who took the Editorial-cartoon Prize; Egyptians Ahmad Nady, Ganzeer, and Donia Maher took the Graphic Novel Prize for The Apartment in Bab El Louk; Jordanian Mohamad Al-Muti took the comic strips prize for “The Handsome Sad Mysterious Man”; Lebanese illustrator Bahij Jaroudi took the Graphic Illustration category for “Last Breath”; and the winner in the Children’s Book Illustrations category was Lebanese illustrator Azza Hussein. 

There was also an Arabic Comics Guardian Award, which went to Egypt’s TokTok magazine and a Lifetime Achievement Award for Syrian artist Loujaina al-Assil.

Find out more about the Mahmoud Kahil Award at their website; and with the CORRECTIV fellowship. Deadline for the fellowship is August 31.