Joe Sacco is one of the foremost journalist cartoonists working today, thanks to books like Palestine and Footnotes in Gaza. And now, he’ll team up with Chris Hedges, the former Middle East Bureau Chief for The New York Times, to craft Requiem for Gaza for Fantagraphics.
“Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco, along with a handful of other courageous journalists, have been at the forefront of providing rigorous reportage and steadfast opposition to Israel’s genocide and the IDF’s atrocities against the Palestinian people — in the face of a largely insensate international response,” Fantagraphics publisher and Requiem for Gaza Editor Gary Groth said via press release. “We are proud to publish this vigorously researched and blazingly humane work of investigative journalism.”
In the book, the duo traveled to Cairo to interview 29 different Palestinian families who had recently left Gaza. The graphic novel, per PR, depicts, “the experience and stories of these families to detail the crucible of the genocide, the loss of homes and communities, the appalling death toll among friends and loved ones, the constant displacement, the terror of indiscriminate killing, the hunger and deprivation, the obliteration of all that was known and familiar, and the struggle to cope with the callous indifference of a world that continues to supply Israel with weapons despite its wholesale destruction of Gaza and mass slaughter.”
The book is composed of comics and single images drawn by Sacco, with narrative written by Hedges, a format they previously used for the bestselling Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Here’s some more on the book, via Fantagraphics:
Hedges’ vivid prose and Sacco’s visceral images complement each other and together paint a portrait of dignity and suffering under genocide. The collective power of the individual stories that chronicle the first day of the genocide, the forced evacuation of homes, the targeted assassinations, the false hopes engendered by ceasefires, the dislocation and alienation of exile, the brutal killing and hasty burial of family members, and the humiliation of living under tarps without clean food and water bring every aspect of the genocide to life. Set against this horror are stories of self-sacrifice and compassion that show how Palestinians not only clung to their humanity, but morally triumphed over their killers.
Requiem for Gaza will hit stores on October 6, 2026 from Fantagraphics. You can check out an interior page, below.
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