Footnotes in Gaza

A meticulous investigation rendered with unforgettable humanity. In Footnotes in Gaza, acclaimed cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco delves into one bloody incident in 1956 that left over one hundred Palestinians dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to the long history of killing in Rafah, a town in the Gaza Strip notorious as a flashpoint in this bitter conflict, Sacco expertly reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. Through painstaking fieldwork and interviews, Sacco reconstructs the massacre and its enduring trauma, weaving past and present, memory and reportage, into a single, searing narrative. With Sacco’s unique visual journalism, Footnotes in Gaza transforms political abstraction into immediate human experience, offering readers an unparalleled insight into the tragedy and its moral cost. ‘There is virtually no precedent for what he does… Sacco is legitimately unique’ The New York Review of Books

Rafah, a town at the southernmost tip of the Gaza Strip, is a squalid place. Raw concrete buildings front rubbish-strewn alleys. The narrow streets are crowded with young children and unemployed men. Situated on the border with Egypt, swaths of Rafah have been reduced to rubble. Rafah is today and has always been a notorious flashpoint in this most bitter of conflicts.

Buried deep in the archives is one bloody incident, in 1956, that left 111 Palestinian refugees dead, shot by Israeli soldiers. Seemingly a footnote to a long history of killing, that day in Rafah - coldblooded massacre or dreadful mistake - reveals the competing truths that have come to define an intractable war. In a quest to get to the heart of what happened, Joe Sacco arrives in Gaza and, immersing himself in daily life, uncovers Rafah, past and present. Spanning fifty years, moving fluidly between one war and the next, alive with the voices of fugitives and schoolchildren, widows and sheikhs, Footnotes in Gaza captures the essence of a tragedy.

As in Palestine and Safe Area Goražde, Joe Sacco''s unique visual journalism has rendered a contested landscape in brilliant, meticulous detail. Footnotes in Gaza, his most ambitious work to date, transforms a critical conflict of our age into intimate and immediate experience.

• | Author: Joe Sacco
• | Publisher: Vintage Publishing
• | Publication Date: Aug 01, 2019
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9781787332010
• | ISBN-10: 1787332012