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18 februari 2005
Pride and prejudice in the Netherlands IndiesPeter Breedveld
Six years ago Rampokan: Java was published, the first part of Peter van Dongen’s graphic novel set in the Netherlands Indies, now known as Indonesia. The story takes place at the eve of the so-called Police Actions (a euphemism for the full-blown colonial war between the Dutch and Indonesian nationalists that took place in 1947 and 1948) and with it Van Dongens solid reputation as a serious graphic novelist was established. Recently the second and last part at long last appeared: Rampokan: Celebes. 12 februari 2005
You have to be carefulPeter Breedveld
Joe Sacco is a journalist who writes his stories in the form of comic strips. He went to Palestine in the early nineties to report about the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the book Palestine. Later he went to Bosnia where he visited a Muslim enclave in Serbian territory, described in Safe Area Gorazde. Last summer The Fixer (translated in Dutch as De Fikser) appeared, about Sacco’s dealings with a shady Bosnian ex-soldier called Neven. 4 februari 2005
Witness to the DevilPeter Breedveld
Craig Thompson (1975, US) is the author of the most raved about graphic novel of the past two years, Blankets, translated in Dutch as Een Deken van Sneeuw. Six hundred pages long, Blankets is touching, funny, exciting, melancholic, smart, slapsticky, shamelessly sentimentalistic at times and really, really beautifully drawn. Last summer I spoke to Thompson, who was touring Europe and had just returned from a trip to Morocco. |
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