I love comics because they are so efficient. I didn't want to write about the Yom Kippur war or whatever. "The challenge is not to explain too much. Back at home, I waited for two months, I read back all my notes, looked at all my sketches and then I did as I always do. The book, like Burma Chronicles, was written at home in Montpellier, after the family's 12-month posting was up (Delisle is a Quebecois his wife is French). But you will also witness the one night of the year when the Haredim get paralytically drunk meet the priest who keeps a collection of horror films at his church on the Mount of Olives and find out what happens when Delisle shows Nablus art students scenes from one of his old strips. Within its pages, you will find the settlements and the "security" wall. Yet his book is a small miracle: concise, even-handed, highly particular. Given the millstone of history, you could have forgiven Delisle for flunking this one. The bar is set extremely high when it comes to graphic books and the Middle East: one thinks of Joe Sacco's Palestine, Rutu Modan's Exit Wounds, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis. His new book, Jerusalem: Chronicles from the Holy City, won the main prize at the 2012 Angoulême International Comics festival (the graphic novel equivalent of the Palme d'Or) and has already sold 110,000 copies in France alone. Places that seem fuzzy and complicated – or, in the case of Pyongyang, completely invisible – appear before you, clear and bright. He goes on day trips, albeit not necessarily to the tourist places. He meets people and asks them questions, some basic, some tricky. Once embedded, though, he moves carefully beyond all this quotidian stuff.
Funny, precise, and unafraid to mention national foibles, Delisle begins his narratives as the baffled outsider: the galumphing expat who must cope with all the boring logistics of life, from finding a playground for his children to predicting the vagaries of the bus service. Delisle is a comics writer whose books – Shenzhen, Pyongyang, Burma Chronicles – document his travels so vividly that you return to your Rough Guide, your Lonely Planet with a heavy heart.
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