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A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali
Contributor(s): al-Ali, Naji (Author), Sacco, Joe (Introduction by)

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 ISBN: 1844673650     ISBN-13: 9781844673650
Publisher: Verso
OUR PRICE: $23.70  

Binding Type: Paperback
Published: June 2009
Qty:

Annotation: Throughout history artists have faced the threat of violence when their work offended the state or the political elite. The late Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al-Ali was just such an artist, producing thousands of cartoons satirizing the powers that be in the Middle East, and was ultimately assassinated in Grosvenor Square, London. Emerging from humble beginnings in the refugee camps, for over 30 years he was an uncompromising critic of a regressive Arab political culture and of Western intervention in Arab affairs. Known as the Palestinian Malcolm X, Naji is still the most popular artist in the Arab world, loved for his defense of ordinary people, and for his criticism of repression and despotism. Paradoxically, strict censorship and widespread illiteracy in the Arab world helped Naji to achieve his remarkable success. His unrelenting cartoons exposed the brutality of the Israeli army and the hypocrisy of the PLO, earning him many powerful enemies.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Art | Middle Eastern
- Humor | Form - Comic Strips & Cartoons
- Humor | Topic - Politics
Dewey: 956.04
Physical Information: 0.41" H x 7.36" W x 7.52" L (0.64 lbs) 128 pages
Features: Illustrated, Price on Product, Price on Product - Canadian, Table of Contents
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
Naji al-Ali grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in the south Lebanese city of Sidon, where his gift for drawing was discovered by the Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani in the late 1950s. Early the following decade he left for Kuwait, embarking on a thirty-year career that would see his cartoons published daily in newspapers from Cairo to Beirut, London to Paris.

Resolutely independent and unaligned to any political party, Naji al-Ali strove to speak to and for the ordinary Arab people; the pointed satire of his stark, symbolic cartoons brought him widespread renown. Through his most celebrated creation, the witness-child Handala, al-Ali criticized the brutality of Israeli occupation, the venality and corruption of the regimes in the region, and the suffering of the Palestinian people, earning him many powerful enemies and the soubriquet "the Palestinian Malcolm X."

For the first time in book form, A Child in Palestine presents the work of one of the Arab world's greatest cartoonists, revered throughout the region for his outspokenness, honesty and humanity.

"That was when the character Handala was born. The young, barefoot Handala was a symbol of my childhood. He was the age I was when I had left Palestine and, in a sense, I am still that age today and I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine. The character of Handala was a sort of icon that protected my soul from falling whenever I felt sluggish or I was ignoring my duty. That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense--the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa."--Naji al-Ali, in conversation with Radwa Ashour
 
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