Still a definite recommendation but slightly long and redundant. It's really one-sided (as intended) and should be taken with some balancing perspective. Artwork and the story-telling are both solid for the most part.

Joe Sacco is as good an artist as anyone drawing graphic novels today. What sets him apart is that his novels are not novels: they're journalism, accounts of his travels into grim and unhappy places. Elsewhere he has visited war zones. Here he visits Palestinian refugee camps. He records a series of Palestinians' points of view, doing what he can to portray what they tell him, and portraying what he sees himself.

The book has to work against a perpetual weight of monotony, which Sacco describes as one of the most depressing qualities of life in the camps. As a spectator who can go in and out, he is aware of his special status, but in both text and drawing he comes forth as a modest guy who just happens to draw exceedingly well, and who, lucky for us, has the courage to put himself in places most of us would dread to enter.

Sacco is especially good at drawing scenes. He is master of his medium, using panels of varying sizes to keep the eye moving, or to arrest it with a telling detail or complex panorama. But even better than that, he is marvelous at making human connections, and presenting them with a matter-of-factness that persuades as deeply as any drama can. The book pulsates with all kinds of feeling: fear, hope, anger, suspicion, sorrow, friendship, and more than a little love.

A welcome feature of trhis edition is its description of Sacco's working methods, particularly his use of photographs.

Joe Sacco has tried to put a very complex issue in to a comic book which is a challenge by its on and he got it.
Although the book is far from objective he is giving a clear and ""kind"" of true view of realty through Palestinians eyes.
Except for one comic relief (The joke about the 3 secret agents) there are not much of happy moment in the book which make it some kind depressing and make you thing is this really reality?
I think not but then again who am I?
Still i would recommend this book for people who are not familiar with the situation and would like to know a bit more about it.
I have also bought "Exit wounds" by Rutu Modan as a comic book from the other side of the conflict. It is something totally different but still worth a try.
See my review on it under the title.

Cheers.

-S-