What would you do if you woke up one day to dis­cov­er that you were trapped in some­one else’s body? This ques­tion serves as the premise for The Case of David Zim­mer­man,a graph­ic nov­el writ­ten by broth­ers Lucas Harari and Arthur Harari, and trans­lat­ed from the orig­i­nal French into Eng­lish by David Homel. The com­ic cen­ters on the epony­mous David Zim­mer­man, a thir­ty-four-year-old strug­gling pho­tog­ra­ph­er based in con­tem­po­rary Paris. At a New Years Eve par­ty, David’s ​“best friend” gives David a pill of unknown prove­nance. The next sev­er­al pages are drawn with an intense black-and-red back­ground, show­ing David’s altered con­scious­ness. In this state, David encoun­ters a mys­te­ri­ous woman. Seem­ing­ly by coin­ci­dence, it is the same woman David had recent­ly pho­tographed at a Jew­ish wed­ding, although the two nev­er meet. At the par­ty, David and the woman are intense­ly drawn to each oth­er and have word­less sex in a pri­vate room.

In the next scene, David wakes up alone in his own apart­ment but in his lover’s body. He attempts to dis­cov­er her iden­ti­ty and locate her under the assump­tion she now pos­sess­es his body. Even­tu­al­ly, David dis­cov­ers that the woman’s name is Rachel and even locates her apart­ment, although Rachel her­self is nowhere to be found. As the plot unfolds, it becomes clear that the body-switch­ing phe­nom­e­non is not con­fined to David and Rachel. David meets a fel­low suf­fer­er of body-swap­ping named Samia. David and Samia work to unrav­el the mys­tery of their bod­ies and iden­ti­ties as they try to cope with their altered form. The com­ic builds towards a dra­mat­ic con­clu­sion that forces Samia to con­front her past and David to nego­ti­ate a future.

The Case of David Zim­mer­man shows how impor­tant it is that one rec­og­nize their iden­ti­ty. David and Samia both strug­gle to con­vince oth­ers that their exter­nal form does not match the per­son inside. It is deeply painful when their inti­mates reject them or when they feel com­pelled to con­ceal their altered iden­ti­ty. The nar­ra­tive is a reminder of the psy­chic sig­nif­i­cance of being seen by others.

Both the images and the text under­score David’s Jew­ish iden­ti­ty. His apart­ment con­tains a meno­rah, and he reg­u­lar­ly pho­tographs Jew­ish wed­dings and bar or bat mitz­vahs. David’s moth­er is a pro­fes­sor of Jew­ish his­to­ry at the Sorbonne. 

The com­ic is drawn in a cin­e­mat­ic style, with many wide-angle shots show­cas­ing the comic’s set­ting in detail. This style facil­i­tat­ed the devel­op­ment of a fea­ture film (The Unknown) inspired by the graph­ic nov­el. Pol­i­tics also lurks in the comic’s back­ground. In one extend­ed scene, David (as Rachel) runs through the streets of Paris and pass­es graf­fi­ti read­ing ​“Free Gaza” before encoun­ter­ing a labor protest that quick­ly descends into police vio­lence. The cin­e­mat­ic style is again on dis­play in an extend­ed scene when David enters the car of a stranger and they dri­ve down a high­way at night. The pan­els show the car from mul­ti­ple angles, inter­spersed with the tense con­ver­sa­tion occur­ring in the vehi­cle. The book itself is phys­i­cal­ly large, sim­i­lar to a cof­fee table art book rather than a com­ic book. The large pages allow the read­er to see the detailed draw­ings, many of which are in cool, mut­ed col­ors, reflect­ing the gloomy tone of the comic. 

The nar­ra­tive com­pels the read­er to won­der about what kind of per­son David Zim­mer­man is and why the ordeal has hap­pened to him. Is he a ran­dom vic­tim, mere­ly dealt a cru­el fate? Or is his har­row­ing body-switch­ing ordeal an appro­pri­ate come­up­pance? Per­haps David is flawed like every­one, nei­ther per­fect nor unre­deemable; just a per­son try­ing to cope with the whims of fate.