Using authenticity and nuance to probe the history of Black resistance, specifically women-led slave revolts, Wake has been described as “ the deep, unhealed, intergenerational pain of rape, torture, and death that was the lot of untold women.“įor the romance-lover Jul Maroh – Blue Is the Warmest Color (2010)Ĭonsider yourself warned: while this is a beautiful love story, it’s equally as heartbreaking. Rebecca Hall – Wake: The Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts (2021) With the graphic novel’s name being taken from two Arabic words: “mishadra”, which means “cannot”, and “misadra”, which means “seizure,” the novel paints a heartfelt portrait of what it means to live with an oft-misunderstood condition in modern society. Mis(h)adra details the life of Arab-American college student, Isaac, who struggles to live with his epileptic condition. Citizen 13660 is an illustrated memoir of her life in relocation centres in California and Utah and has been described by the New York Times Book Review as “ remarkably objective and vivid, and even humorous. Miné Okubo was one of the thousands of Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Navigating two wildly different worlds, Unterzakhn paints a moving portrait of the desires and sacrifices that make up the fabric of immigrant life. Set on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early-twentieth century, Unterzakhn follows the lives of two sisters, Esther and Fanya, and charts the path from childhood to adulthood. NICK MARINER THE RIME OF THE MODERN MARINER As a result, holding this exquisite book in your hands (his publisher, Jonathan Cape, has spared no expense) feels akin to a sacramental act.” It’s no easy feat to take on a classic as revered as Coleridge’s, but Hayes is surprisingly successful, with his efforts summed up by Rachel Cook in The Guardian: “As a draughtsman, Hayes here places himself firmly in an English romantic tradition that includes Thomas Bewick and Eric Gill, Samuel Palmer and Stanley Spencer. Set in the modern-day, Nick Hayes’ graphic novel is concerned with issues of environmental waste and the climate crisis.

The Rime of the Modern Mariner is a retelling of Samuel Coleridge’s classic epic The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Nick Hayes – The Rime of the Modern Mariner (2011) Released to wide critical acclaim, Publishers Weekly reviewed the novel as “epic intimate…”, along with The New York Times’ Patrick Cockburn writing: “Joe Sacco’s gripping, important book about two long-forgotten mass killings of Palestinians in Gaza stands out as one of the few contemporary works on the Israeli-Palestinian struggle likely to outlive the era in which they were written.”

Graphic novel the best we could do