Zailaa Rima makes her English-language debut with this robust mix of memoir, history, and magical realism, which gathers her graphic novel trilogy into one volume. […] Zailaa Rima nimbly handles the shifts in time with evocative, gestural drawings that capture how sociopolitical upheavals reverberate across generations. Throughout, her restless blend of the personal and the political thrums with urgency. Readers will have a tough time putting this one down.”—Publishers Weekly
“The opening lines of white text on black give way to rich, expressive patches of ink carved up with stark white forms and fine lines, building a city through its architectural geometry and imperfections and through the body language of a street vendor negotiating his cart against heavy traffic and a young refugee shot dead in the street. The panels click along like a film reel, narrated by a Hakawati, a storyteller who speaks through the entire cast: cab driver, singer, author surrogate, mother and daughter in search of the sea, Greek chorus of trash shovelers questioning the nature of the narrative in which they find themselves. The three volumes grow progressively personal, and the art becomes more representational, stiffening into detailed figures cut out against their backgrounds like a black box stage play, delivering elegiac dialogue that dissects existence. All three volumes favor atmosphere over narrative as they wryly but earnestly ponder the refugee’s wandering out of time, a mother’s long-ago involvement in a movement, the machinery of political change, and historical amnesia. Opaque but arresting.”—Kirkus Review
“Decades in the making, graphic novelist and filmmaker Barrack Zailaa Rima's Beirut trilogy—equal parts love letter and mournful lamentation for a lost, crisis-ridden homeland—debuts in English, thoughtfully translated by Carla Calargé and Alexandra Gueydan-Turek… Although Beirut might seem slim, Zailaa Rima's art significantly and impressively expands her narratives. The electrifying mix of double-page spreads, irregularly hand-drawn and borderless panels, jarring all-black backgrounds, and intricate details alternating with simple outlines reflects the unsettled chaos that is quotidian for generations of Beirut's residents. Rima acts as privileged cipher, adroitly navigating the fragmentation—personal, communal, national—of being both insider and outsider.”—Terry Hong, Shelf Awareness
“It is impossible to do justice to Zailaa Rima’s Beirut. The collection is a visual and philosophical journey, both forwards and backwards in time, that one must make themselves. After which, as Zailaa Rima invites, one will be well-served to critique this current inadequate world and strive towards a better one. Yalla, a better world awaits!”—Salma Hussain, the temz review
"Full of rewarding fissures and detours, embracing every complication and every contradiction that comes up. A brilliant political portrait of a city."—Michael DeForge, author of Birds of Maine
2024-08-03
This collection of Rima’s three graphic novels from across two decades rambles through the streets of Lebanon’s capital, a city driven by politics, war, and family.
An introduction by the translators frames Rima’s work in the tradition of the flaneur, a wandering and enraptured observer of a city, and contextualizes Rima’s connection to the titular city as a visitor rather than a resident, coming to the bustling metropolis with hungry eyes. The first volume opens with the dialogue of two old intimate acquaintances reuniting after decades of separate lives, reminiscing about a political movement that electrified the moment but has been mostly forgotten as the city weathered decades of war and rapacious commerce, becoming mired in corruption and mountains of literal waste. The opening lines of white text on black give way to rich, expressive patches of ink carved up with stark white forms and fine lines, building a city through its architectural geometry and imperfections and through the body language of a street vendor negotiating his cart against heavy traffic and a young refugee shot dead in the street. The panels click along like a film reel, narrated by a Hakawati, a storyteller who speaks through the entire cast: cab driver, singer, author surrogate, mother and daughter in search of the sea, Greek chorus of trash shovelers questioning the nature of the narrative in which they find themselves. The three volumes grow progressively personal, and the art becomes more representational, stiffening into detailed figures cut out against their backgrounds like a black box stage play, delivering elegiac dialogue that dissects existence. All three volumes favor atmosphere over narrative as they wryly but earnestly ponder the refugee’s wandering out of time, a mother’s long-ago involvement in a movement, the machinery of political change, and historical amnesia.
Opaque but arresting.
