Hakim’s Odyssey
Book 1: From Syria to Turkey
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- $30.99
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- $30.99
Publisher Description
A remarkable recounting of a human journey through an inhumane world.
What does it mean to be a “refugee”? It is easy for those who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others’ experiences when you haven’t been in their shoes.
In Hakim’s Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home.
This graphic novel is necessary reading for our time. Alternately hopeful and heartbreaking, Hakim’s Odyssey is a story about what it means to be human in a world that sometimes fails to be humane.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It's profoundly disturbing how quickly a typical, middle-class life can be violently disrupted, as Toulmé shows in the harrowing, frustrating saga of Hakim, who fled Syria during the country's ongoing civil war. Hakim, whom Toulmé interviewed in order to adapt his story into a comic, is 25 at the beginning of the Arab Spring protests in 2011, when he's arrested and tortured during a government crackdown. Once freed, Hakim tries to settle in Beirut, Amman, and Antalya, living with relatives and high school friends. Along the way, he falls in love and repeatedly encounters the prejudice of locals toward Syrian refugees. Though he was once a business owner, it's incredibly difficult for him to find work even as a menial laborer. Toulmé adeptly captures how Hakim's life slides into sudden chaos, as well as his maddening inability to find consistent work. Visually, Toulmé's art recalls Riad Sattouf's Arab of the Future, though doesn't quite rise to its nuanced characterizations. Toulmé too often inserts himself into the narrative, reminding readers of his role as interviewer and interpreting the significance of Hakim's story and, in doing so, breaks its narrative flow. Meanwhile, sections laying out the larger geopolitical backdrop end up feeling rather didactic. Despite some flaws, Hakim's story adds to the growing body of graphic literature on the refugee experience, with insightful perspective on how an ordinary life can crumble. (Oct.)
