SOURCE: A review of Palestine, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 35, August 29, 1994, p. 71.

[Here, the critic offers a highly laudatory assessment of Joe Sacco's nonfiction book Palestine.]

Sacco spent two months during the winter of 1991–92 living in Jerusalem and visiting the West Bank and the Gaza Strip to see for himself what life was like for Palestinians under the Israeli occupation. He has produced [Palestine] a fascinating you-are-there-with-me comics account as impressive for its idiosyncratic personal tone as for its scrupulous documentation of human-rights abuses and lively accounts of ordinary Palestinians (in East Jerusalem, the West Bank towns and the decrepit refugee camps). In this volume (the sequel will focus on the Gaza Strip and more recent events), he details his encounters, discussions and interviews with a wide range of West Bank personalities: Arab shopkeepers, refugees from 1948, rock-throwing Palestinian teenagers, teachers, intellectuals, former prisoners, Israeli soldiers, members of the...