Title: Footnotes in Gaza
Author: Joe Sacco
Context: Footnotes in Gaza, is Joe Sacco’s journalistic graphic novel during the Suez crisis when 2 bloody incidents occurred. The graphic novel published in 2009 describes the author’s pursuit in finding out what occurred in Rafah and Khan Yunis on November 1956 the most vexed places in the Gaza Strip. He is on an investigation spree of a forgotten crime.
Synopsis:
Rafah is a squalid town located at the lowest tip of the Gaza Strip. Unemployed men and young children crowd at the narrow streets, alleys are strewn with trash, raw concrete buildings are seen in Rafah. Rafah’s long borders with Egypt, have been reduced to rubble by bulldozers. In the bitterest of conflicts, Rafah has been a notorious flashpoint as of today.
In the bloody incident Israeli soldiers shot down around 111 Palestinians in a dreadful mistake or cold-blooded massacre as revealed about the intractable war.
The great cartoonist-reporter, makes the effort to discover exactly what had happened. Accordingly he immerses himself in the Khan Younis town and daily life routines of Rafah, and tries uncovering the past and present of Gaza. True essence of the tragedy spanning across 50 long years is revealed as he moves fluidly between one war to the next, with incidents alive with the voices of sheikhs, widows, school children and fugitives.
A contested landscaped has been rendered by the Joe Sacco in meticulous and brilliant detail in this unique visual journalism work. Till date, Footnotes in Gaza is the author’s most enterprising work which transforms an analytical conflict in Gaza into an immediate and intimate experience.
Other works by the author:
Comic books
1988–1992: Yahoo #1–6
1993–1995: Palestine #1–9
1994: Spotlight on the Genius that is Joe Sacco
1998: Stories From Bosnia #1: Soba
1987–1988: Centrifugal Bumble-Puppy
Books
1993: Palestine: A Nation Occupied.
1996: Palestine: In the Gaza Strip
1997: War Junkie
2000: Safe Area Goražde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992–1995
2001: Palestine
2003: The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo
2003: Notes from a Defeatist
2005: War's End: Profiles from Bosnia 1995–96
2006: But I Like It
2009: Footnotes in Gaza
2012: Journalism
2013: The Great War: July 1, 1916: The First Day of the Battle of the Somme
2014: Bumf Vol. 1: I Buggered the Kaiser
2020: Paying the Land. Henry Holt and Co
As illustrator
2012: Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt with Chris Hedges
