“So we’re in Israel, right?” asks Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle in Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, in reference to the East Jerusalem neighbourhood in which he and his wife—an administrator with Médecins Sans Frontières—stayed for twelve months beginning in 2008.
“Well, it depends,” replies an MSF staffer. Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, but the international community recognizes it as part of the West Bank. Oh well, Delisle muses, he has “a whole year to figure it out.” While he is only passing through, however, it is an open question in his latest graphic memoir whether Israel will figure itself out.
A former animator, the Quebec City–born Delisle is most famous for his accounts of his former career travels, namely to China and North Korea, in the comics travelogues Shenzhen
Kenton Smith is a freelance writer and arts and culture critic whose writing on comics has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Quill and Quire, the Winnipeg Free Press and Canadian Art. He has also written for Broken Pencil magazine and the CBC.
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