Post­ed by Nao­mi Fire­stone-Teeter

Cre­at­ed simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with the Award win­ning film, Waltz With Bashir: A Lebanon War Sto­ry (Ari Fol­man and David Polon­sky), the graph­ic nov­el, will be pub­lished by Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books on Feb­ru­ary 17th. The nov­el, and film, depict Folman’s explo­ration of war, repres­sion, and remem­brance in con­nec­tion to the 1982 war in Lebanon. Draw­ing on the sto­ries of oth­er sol­diers and his own return­ing frag­ments of mem­o­ry, Fol­man pieces togeth­er the war and his place in it.

In the inter­view accom­pa­ny­ing the press release for the book, David Polon­sky answers how the expe­ri­ence of read­ing the book is dif­fer­ent from see­ing the movie:

David Polon­sky: The role of the view­er changes in an inter­est­ing way. In the cin­e­ma, as a film­mak­er, you own the audi­ence, but with a book it’s com­plete­ly reversed. You’re at the mer­cy of the read­er, who can close the book at any moment. To say it dif­fer­ent­ly, the book puts the sto­ry into the reader’s hands while in the movie the­ater the view­er is in the hands of the sto­ry­teller. So the job of keep­ing the reader’s atten­tion is more of a chal­lenge. Also, I’d say that in the graph­ic nov­el the sto­ry is tighter, we were able to present the his­tor­i­cal facts more clear­ly, and the pan­els, with­out the spe­cial effects of the movie process, are more detailed and refined.

And the audience’s rela­tion­ship to it is dif­fer­ent. The pace of the book allows for a bet­ter grasp of the nuances and a more reli­able trans­fer of infor­ma­tion. Read­ing a graph­ic nov­el, you’re not in dan­ger of los­ing track of the sto­ry and you have time to pause over the pan­els and take in details that oth­er­wise fly by. Anoth­er thing is that in the book the draw­ings are able to stand as art in their own right, and you see how much of the sto­ry the car­ry. Both the illus­tra­tions and the reader’s mind get to play a larg­er role.

And…a pre­view of the book:

Image used cour­tesy of Met­ro­pol­i­tan Books/​Henry Holt & Com­pa­ny and authors Ari Fol­man and David Polonsky

And…here’s the trail­er for the movie:

Check out PW for more infor­ma­tion about the book.

For a longer excerpt, click here.