Festival BOOKS
JOE SACCO Stripping it back to basics
there’s an implied sense
I n its championing of an entire medium within this year’s inaugural Stripped strand, that Edinburgh International Book Festival are trying to further erode the tiresome conceit that stories told with words and pictures are just for kids by placing them closer to the orbit of the festival’s discursive heart. In booking Joe Sacco for his debut visit to the Book Festival, they’ve pulled off something of a coup. In comparison to the fanboy-exciting names of previous high- profile comicworld guests like Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison, Sacco is the poster boy for graphic novels as meaty subjects of Sunday supplement analysis read by people who have never stepped into a Forbidden Planet.
Born in Malta in 1960 and raised in Melbourne and then Los Angeles, Sacco earned a degree in journalism from the University of Oregon and promptly did nothing with it, instead returning to Malta to write for a guidebook publisher and become a leading light in the Maltese-
language comic industry (there were few competitors). Back in America in the mid- 80s he produced underground magazines and wrote for The Comics Journal, and in the early 90s combined his twin interests of comics and travel to political hotspots to create the breakthrough Palestine for publisher Fantagraphics, fusing comics and journalism to a previously unanticipated degree. He would later recreate his travels in Bosnia in Safe Area Gorazde and The Fixer and publish the acclaimed and controversial Footnotes in Gaza in 2009. This Edinburgh appearance follows the publication last year of Journalism, a typically hard-hitting anthology which tours Palestine, Iraq, India and The Hague in search of what his introduction calls ‘those who seldom get a hearing’, for ‘the comics medium . . . has forced me to make choices. In my view, that is part of its message.’ (David Pollock)
Charlotte Square Gardens, 0845 373 5888, 13 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).
For more info go to LIST.CO.UK /FESTIVAL
HITLIST THE BEST BOOKS, COMICS & EVENTS
✽ Best of Young British Novelists 2013 at Jura Unbound Award-winning writers
Jenni Fagan, Sarah Hall and Evie Wyld read from their latest books at this laid-back evening event. Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, 13 Aug, 9pm, free.
✽ Joe Sacco Sacco fuses comics and journalism in his critically-acclaimed books;
his most recent project is Journalism, a hard- hitting anthology touring Palestine, Iraq, India and The Hague. See preview, left. Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, 13 Aug, 8.30pm, £10 (£8).
✽ Patrick Flanery and Philipp Meyer (pictured) The darker side of the American dream emerges in these sparsely and elegantly written novels. Edinburgh International
Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, 10 Aug, 6.45pm, £10 (£8).
✽ Will Storr Why do we believe things without evidence? The Heretics is a journey
through a complex world. Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, 13 Aug, 2pm, £7 (£5).
✽ Kate Atkinson The author of the Jackson
Brodie novels discusses Life After Life, an enthralling journey through a repeatedly-lived life that explores ideas of memory, purpose and predestination. Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, 10 Aug, 11.30am, £10 (£8).
✽ BBC Edinburgh Fringe Festival Slam Heats Join exuberant compere Young
Dawkins to celebrate the finest in British spoken word, including Tim Turnbull, Paula Varjack, Martin Daws, Ross Sutherland, Graeme Hawley, and Scottish makar Liz Lochead. Unmissable. BBC Festival Village, Potterrow, 12–15 August, 8pm, free.
8–15 Aug 2013 THE LIST FESTIVAL 27