How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less

by Sarah Glidden

Overview

A stunningly accomplished debut graphic novel, HOW TO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL IN 60 DAYS OR LESS is Sarah Glidden's charming and funny travel memoir of her trip through Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Masada and other historic locales, brought to life with lush watercolors in all of their quirky and breathtaking detail. It is also a sensitive, deeply thoughtful and personal examination of a highly charged issue, an account of a journey Sarah never expected to take. Her experience clashes with her preconceived notions again and again, particularly when she tries to take a non-chaperoned excursion into the West Bank. As she struggles to "understand Israel," Sarah is forced to question first her beliefs, then ultimately her own identity.

Sarah Glidden won the prestigious Ignatz Award for "Most Promising New Talent" as well as the Masie Kukoc Award for Comics Inspiration. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781401236441
Publisher:	DC Comics
Publication date:	06/12/2012
Sold by:	DC Comics
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	109 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

SARAH GLIDDEN won the prestigious Ignatz Award for "Most Promising new Talent" in 2008 for her self-published mini-comic version of HOW TO UNDERSTAND ISRAEL. She has also contributed to various collaborative book projects including Syncopated: An Anthology of Non-Fiction Picto-Essays, I Saw You...Comics Inspired by Real-life Missed Connections, and Awesome 2: Awesomer.

Editorial Reviews

…Glidden addresses the nuances and complexities of Israel's past and present through humor and history lessons in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, the Dead Sea and beyond. She manages to make a familiar journey fresh in this graphic format…Balancing seriousness with sarcasm, she captures the idiosyncrasies of Israeli culture and ponders the difficult questions of how Israel might pursue a peaceful and secure future.
—The Washington Post

Lisa Bonos

"A memoir of a trip this left-leaning Jew takes to Israel, determined to have her ideas about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict confirmed. Of course, things turn out more complicated than Glidden had imagined. So do her deceptively simple line drawings… and the thinking that informs the vivid dialogue in a graphic nonfiction novel of subtlety and understated wit." -Entertainment Weekly

"Glidden the storyteller exudes intimacy and warmth—both in her tube watercolors and her sometimes confessional persona...Glidden the knowledge-seeker thinks in much the same way as she paints: forever toward the light."—The Washington Post

"[A] masterful new book of graphic nonfiction."— VICE

"A primer for those who aren't aware of the complexity of issues and emotions underlying this seemingly interminable strife."— Kirkus Review

"A surprisingly disarming book—easy to read, and rewarding to contemplate."— AV Club

"Another enduring take-away is that not only is Israel beautiful but here is an artist who has managed to create something beautiful from something painful and fractured and messy and complicated. Which is a mighty achievement."— Bookmunch

From the Publisher

This graphic memoir, the author's book-length debut, relates her eye-opening visit to Israel.

Before embarking on her "birthright" tour of Israel, Glidden explained to her non-Jewish boyfriend that "I'm ready to go there and discover the truth behind this whole mess once and for all. It'll all be crystal clear by the time I come back!" The narrative sustains that spirit of self-deprecating innocence throughout, making Glidden an effective guide through the trouble spots of the Middle East, though inevitably she returns home with more questions than answers, more ambivalence than assurance. Anticipating propaganda that would attempt to counter what she terms her "left-wing and progressive," pro-Palestinian sympathies, she met Israelis who shared some of her reservations and discovered that people whom she liked could have conflicting opinions on complex issues. "We ask only one thing of you and that is not to be pro-Israel or pro-Palestine, but to be pro-peace," she heard at a speakers' panel of Jews and Muslims who had both lost loved ones to the conflict. By the end of her two-month tour, she realizes that peace in the Middle East is the ultimate goal, but that achieving it will be a very challenging process. She attempts some inventive narrative techniques, but the author would have to show more insight or more of an edge to give readers more than they already know.

A primer for those who aren't aware of the complexity of issues and emotions underlying this seemingly interminable strife.

Kirkus Reviews