Post­ed by Nao­mi Firestone-Teeter

Drawn and Quar­ter­ly pub­lished Guy Delisle’s Jerusalem: Chron­i­cles from the Holy City in April. Click here for a preview.



Acclaimed graph­ic mem­oirist Guy Delisle returns with his strongest work yet — a thought­ful and mov­ing trav­el­ogue about life in the Holy City.

Guy Delisle expert­ly lays the ground­work for a cul­tur­al road map of con­tem­po­rary Jerusalem, uti­liz­ing the clas­sic stranger in a strange land point of view that made his oth­er books, pyongyang, shen­zhen, and bur­ma chron­i­cles required read­ing for under­stand­ing what dai­ly life is like in cities few are able to trav­el to. In jerusalem: chron­i­cles from the holy city, Delisle explores the com­plex­i­ties of a city that rep­re­sents so much to so many. He elo­quent­ly exam­ines the impact of the con­flict on the lives of peo­ple on both sides of the wall while drol­ly recount­ing the quo­tid­i­an: check­points, traf­fic jams, and holidays.

When observ­ing the Chris­t­ian, Jew­ish, and Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions that call Jerusalem home, Delisle’s drawn line is both sen­si­tive and fair, assum­ing noth­ing and draw­ing every­thing. Jerusalem show­cas­es once more Delisle’s mas­tery of the travelogue.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Lan­cast­er, Penn­syl­va­nia, Nao­mi is the CEO of Jew­ish Book Coun­cil. She grad­u­at­ed from Emory Uni­ver­si­ty with degrees in Eng­lish and Art His­to­ry and, in addi­tion, stud­ied at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don. Pri­or to her role as exec­u­tive direc­tor, Nao­mi served as the found­ing edi­tor of the JBC web­site and blog and man­ag­ing edi­tor of Jew­ish Book World. In addi­tion, she has over­seen JBC’s dig­i­tal ini­tia­tives, and also devel­oped the JBC’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series and Unpack­ing the Book: Jew­ish Writ­ers in Conversation.