Book picks similar to
Baddawi by Leila Abdelrazaq


graphic-novels
graphic-novel
non-fiction
middle-east

Homage to Catalonia


George Orwell - 1938
    This famous account describes the war and Orwell’s own experiences. Introduction by Lionel Trilling.

Psychiatric Tales


Darryl Cunningham - 2010
    Topics covered include Bi-polar disorder, self harming, suicide, depression and theauthor also shows how for some famous people mental disorders were part of what may have made them great. Frank, hard hitting and moving.

It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken: A Picture Novella


Seth - 1998
    While trying to understand his dissatisfaction with the present, Seth discovers the life and work of Kalo, a forgotten New Yorker cartoonist from the 1940s. But his obsession blinds him to the needs of his lover and the quiet desperation of his family. Wry self-reflection and moody colours characterize Seth's style in this tale about learning lessons from nostalgia. His playful and sophisticated experiment with memoir provoked a furious debate among cartoon historians and archivists about the existence of Kalo, and prompted a Details feature about Seth's "hoax".

Gonzo


Will Bingley - 2010
    Thompson's extraordinary life he was publicly branded a bum, a vandal, a thief, a liar, an addict, a freak and a psychopath. Only some of which are true. Even in the 20th century crowded with celebrity, his legacy remains a brilliantly vital force.The great American iconoclast, the great American outlaw, the great American hedonist... However you choose to view him, Thompson remains the high-water mark for all social commentators the world over, and a truly fearless champion of individual liberties.This is his story... the story of a troubled kid from Louisville, Kentucky, who went on to become an international icon. This is a story that charts the legendary heights of so-called "Gonzo Journalism", plumbs the darkest depths of American politics, and presents a lifestyle beyond imagination."No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride."

Long Red Hair


Meags Fitzgerald - 2015
    In this graphic memoir, Fitzgerald paints a lively childhood full of sleepovers, amateur fortune-telling and watching scary movies. Yet, Fitzgerald suspects that she is unlike her friends. She intimately takes us from her first kiss to a life sworn off romance.Long Red Hair alluringly delves into the mystique of sorcery and sisterhood.

The Bookseller of Kabul


Åsne Seierstad - 2002
    He was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned by the communists, and watched illiterate Taliban soldiers burn piles of his books in the street. He even resorted to hiding most of his stock—almost ten thousand books—in attics all over Kabul.But while Khan is passionate in his love of books and his hatred of censorship, he also has strict views on family life and the role of women. As an outsider, Åsne Seierstad found herself in a unique position, able to move freely between the private, restricted sphere of the women—including Khan’s two wives—and the freer, more public lives of the men.It is an experience that Seierstad finds both fascinating and frustrating. As she steps back from the page and allows the Khans to speak for themselves, we learn of proposals and marriages, hope and fear, crime and punishment. The result is a genuinely gripping and moving portrait of a family, and a clear-eyed assessment of a country struggling to free itself from history.' to 'This mesmerizing portrait of a proud man who, through three decades and successive repressive regimes, heroically braved persecution to bring books to the people of Kabul has elicited extraordinary praise throughout the world and become a phenomenal international bestseller. The Bookseller of Kabul is startling in its intimacy and its details—a revelation of the plight of Afghan women and a window into the surprising realities of daily life in today’s Afghanistan.'

Becoming RBG: Ruth Bader Ginsburg's Journey to Justice


Debbie Levy - 2019
    She blazed trails to the peaks of the male-centric worlds of education and law, where women had rarely risen before.Ruth Bader Ginsburg has often said that true and lasting change in society and law is accomplished slowly, one step at a time. This is how she has evolved, too. Step by step, the shy little girl became a child who questioned unfairness, who became a student who persisted despite obstacles, who became an advocate who resisted injustice, who became a judge who revered the rule of law, who became…RBG.

James Joyce: Portrait of a Dubliner: A Graphic Biography


Alfonso Zapico - 2011
    With evocative anecdotes and hundreds of ink-wash drawings, Alfonso Zapico invites the reader to share Joyce's journey, from his earliest days in Dublin to his life with his great love, Nora Barnacle, and their children, and his struggles and triumphs as an artist.Joyce experienced poverty, rejection, censorship, charges of blasphemy and obscenity, war, and crippling ill-health. A rebel and nonconformist in Dublin and a harsh critic of Irish society, he left Ireland in self-imposed exile with Nora, moving to Paris, Pola, Trieste, Rome, London, and finally Zurich. He overcame monumental challenges in creating and publishing Dubliners, Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake. Along the way, he encountered a colorful cast of characters, from the Irish nationalists Charles Parnell and Michael Collins to literary greats Yeats, Proust, Hemingway, and Beckett, and the likes of Carl Jung and Vladimir Lenin.

Cub


Cynthia L. Copeland - 2020
    Twelve-year-old Cindy has just dipped a toe into seventh-grade drama—with its complicated friendships, bullies, and cute boys—when she earns an internship as a cub reporter at a local newspaper in the early 1970s. A (rare) young female reporter takes Cindy under her wing, and Cindy soon learns not only how to write a lede, but also how to respectfully question authority, how to assert herself in a world run by men, and—as the Watergate scandal unfolds—how brave reporting and writing can topple a corrupt world leader. Searching for her own scoops, Cindy doesn’t always get it right, on paper or in real life. But whether she’s writing features about ghost hunters, falling off her bicycle and into her first crush, or navigating shifting friendships, Cindy grows wiser and more confident through every awkward and hilarious mistake.

Waves


Ingrid Chabbert - 2017
    Their relationship is put to the test as they forge ahead, working together to rebuild themselves amidst the churning tumult of devastating loss, and ultimately facing the soul-crushing reality that they may never conceive a child of their own.Based on author Ingrid Chabbert’s own experience, coupled with soft, sometimes dreamlike illustrations by Carole Maurel, Waves is a deeply moving story that poignantly captures a woman’s exploration of her pain in order to rediscover hope.

I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity


Izzeldin Abuelaish - 2010
    A Harvard-trained Palestinian doctor who was born and raised in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and "who has devoted his life to medicine and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians" (New York Times), Abuelaish has been crossing the lines in the sand that divide Israelis and Palestinians for most of his life - as a physician who treats patients on both sides of the line, as a humanitarian who sees the need for improved health and education for women as the way forward in the Middle East. And, most recently, as the father whose daughters were killed by Israeli soldiers on January 16, 2009, during Israel's incursion into the Gaza Strip. His response to this tragedy made news and won him humanitarian awards around the world. Instead of seeking revenge or sinking into hatred, Abuelaish called for the people in the region to start talking to each other. His deepest hope is that his daughters will be "the last sacrifice on the road to peace between Palestinians and Israelis."

Kafka


David Zane Mairowitz - 1994
    Crumb's Kafka is a vibrant biography that examines this Czech writer and his works in a way that a bland texbook never could! R. Crumb's Kafka goes far beyond being explication or popularization or survey. It's a work of art in its own right, a very rare example of what happens when one very idiosyncratic artist absorbs another into his worldview without obliterating the individuality of the absorbed one. Crumb's art is filled with Kafka's insurmountable neuroses. They are all there: Gregor Samsa's sister, the luscious Milena Jesenska, the Advacate's "nurse" Leni, Olda and Frieda, and the ravishing Dora Diamant-drawn in that mixture of self-commandtantalizing knowingness, and sly sexuality, that amazonian randines and thick-limbed physicality that is Crumb.Crumb's idiosyncratic illustrations add a new dimension to the already idiosyncratic world of Kafka. Includes adaptations of "The Judgment," "The Trial," "The Castle," "A Hunger Artist," and "The Metamorphosis."

Rise of the Dungeon Master: Gary Gygax and the Creation of D&D


David Kushner - 2017
    Like the game itself, the narrative casts the reader into the adventure from a first person point of view, taking on the roles of the different characters in the story. Gygax was the son of immigrants who grew up in Lake Geneva, WI, in the 1950s. An imaginative misfit, he escaped into a virtual world based on science fiction novels, military history and strategic games like chess. In the mid-1970s, he co-created the wildly popular Dungeons & Dragons game. Starting out in the basement of his home, he was soon struggling to keep up with the demand. Gygax was a purist, in the sense that he was adamant that players use their imaginations and that the rules of the game remain flexible. A creative mind with no real knowledge of business, he made some strategic errors and had a falling out with the game's co-creator, his close friend and partner, David Arneson. By the late 1970s the game had become so popular among kids that parents started to worry -- so much so that a mom's group was formed to alert parents to the dangers of role play and fantasy. The backlash only fueled the fires of the young fans who continued to play the game, escaping into imaginary worlds. Before long, D&D conventions were set up around the country and the game inspired everything from movies to the first video games. With D&D, Gygax created the kind of role playing fantasy that would fuel the multibillion dollar video game industry, and become a foundation of contemporary geek culture.

Quiet Girl in a Noisy World: An Introvert's Story


Debbie Tung - 2017
    Presented in a loose narrative style that can be read front to back or dipped into at one’s leisure, the book spans three years of Debbie's life, from the end of college to the present day. In these early years of adulthood, Debbie slowly but finally discovers there is a name for her lifelong need to be alone: she’s an introvert.The first half of the book traces Debbie’s final year in college: socializing with peers, dating, falling in love (with an extrovert!), moving in, getting married, meeting new people, and simply trying to fit in. The second half looks at her life after graduation: finding a job, learning to live with her new husband, trying to understand social obligations when it comes to the in-laws, and navigating office life. Ultimately, Quiet Girl sends a positive, pro-introvert message: our heroine learns to embrace her introversion and finds ways to thrive in the world while fulfilling her need for quiet.

Talking to Strangers: A Memoir of My Escape from a Cult


Marianne Boucher - 2020
    Where everyone is kind. Where you can be your truest self. It was the summer of 1980, and Marianne Boucher was ready to chase her figure skating dream. Fuelled by the desire to rise above her mundane high-school life, she sought a new adventure as a glamorous performer in L.A.And then a chance encounter on a California beach introduced her to a new group of people. People who shared her distrust of the status quo. People who seemed to value authenticity and compassion above all else. And they liked her. Not Marianne the performer, but Marianne the person.Soon, she'd abandoned school, her skating and, most dramatically, her family to live with her new friends and help them fulfill their mission of "saving the world." She believed that no sacrifice was too great to be there—and to live with real purpose. They were helping people, and they cared about her . . . didn't they?Talking to Strangers is the true story of Marianne Boucher's experiences in a cult, where she was subjected to sophisticated brainwashing techniques that took away her freedom, and took over her mind. Told in mesmerizing graphic memoir form, with vivid text and art alike, Marianne shares how she fell in with devotees of a frightening spiritual abuser, and how she eventually, painfully, pulled herself out.