Try GOLD - Free
The graphic novelist wittily captures the legacy of Britain's partition of India
The Guardian Weekly
|November 28, 2025
Joe Sacco is one of a very small number of graphic novelists who have smashed through into the mainstream.
His masterwork is Palestine, a collected volume of single-issue comic books he created in the 1990s, documenting the violence in Gaza. His technique is to embed as a journalist in a war zone and interview people on the street, telling their stories with pictures.
Palestine propelled Sacco to fame, drawing comparisons with Maus, Art Spiegelman's two-volume saga about Polish Jews during the Holocaust. Maus and Palestine signalled that graphic novels, as they became known, could be serious works of fiction, nonfiction and journalism.
This story is from the November 28, 2025 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Subscribe to Magzter GOLD to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 10,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORE STORIES FROM The Guardian Weekly
The Guardian Weekly
Price of fame
The creator of eradefining sitcom Girls on sex, stress and the dark side of celebrity
3 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Angels of deception
To test the safety and security of AI, hackers have to trick large language models into breaking their own rules. It requires ingenuity and manipulation - and can come at a deep emotional cost
9 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
COUNTRY DIARY
Richard Bray’s hives stand in a crooked line at the edge of the apple orchard, beside a low thicket of nettles.
1 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Where are the so-called anti-racists when British Jews need them?
For me, it's mostly sadness.
4 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Take flight The Lost Words pair set sights on birds
Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane give the Guardian extracts from their book on Britain's declining bird species
4 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Fears for spears: how to cook asparagus without blanching
\"Blanching captures that green, verdant nature of asparagus so well, and saves its minerality, too,\" agrees Bart Stratfold of Timberyard in Edinburgh, but when the season is going full tilt, it's just common sense to expand our horizons.
2 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Just divine
A major London exhibition reveals how Francisco de Zurbarán reaches into the deepest dimensions of spirituality
6 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Brave new world
Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton make way for a teacher haunted by trauma
2 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
My mother is addicted to gaming. What should I do?
My mother is in her 70s and addicted to playing video games such as Tetris, many different versions of solitaire and slot machine gambling games.
2 mins
May 08, 2026
The Guardian Weekly
Kneecap
Five tracks into Fenian, the listener is confronted by rapper Mo Chara expressing a desire to go and live off-grid outside a village in County Meath.
1 min
May 08, 2026
Listen
Translate
Change font size