Palestine

Between 1991 and 1992, cartoonist Joe Sacco spent two months in the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza, talking to Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation and drawing what he saw. Palestine, originally published as a nine-issue comic-book series and later collected in a single volume, is the landmark work of comics journalism that grew out of those travels.

Sacco puts himself into the story as an anxious, self-questioning narrator, wandering through refugee camps, prisons, hospitals, and rain-soaked streets, recording the testimony of people whose daily lives are shaped by curfews, detentions, and loss. His dense, expressive black-and-white pages combine on-the-ground reportage with an unflinching eye for the absurd and the human, refusing easy conclusions while insisting the reader look.

With an introduction by Edward Said, Palestine helped establish the graphic novel as a serious vehicle for journalism and history. It remains a raw, essential, and deeply humane account of life under occupation during the years of the First Intifada.