The Trial of Roger Casement
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
The extraordinary life of Roger Casement: celebrated humanitarian and condemned Irish revolutionary
In 1911, Roger Casement was knighted by King George V for his ground-breaking humanitarian work in Africa and South America. Five years later, he was hanged for treason. The Trial of Roger Casement charts the events that led a man renowned for his compassion to the noose.
Based on real events, Fionnuala Doran’s absorbing graphic novel explores Casement’s startling downfall, from his efforts to secure German backing for an independent Ireland to his disastrous return home and subsequent arrest. Condemned as a revolutionary, his sexuality laid bare by the circulation of his private journals, Casement’s fate was all but sealed. And yet, on his final day in the courtroom, he delivered a brave, impassioned speech that would resonate long after his death.
About the Author:
Fionnuala Doran is a comics artist. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, she is a Lecturer in Comics, Graphic Novels and Sequential Art at Teeside University. She lives in Glasgow.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Irish culture has all but canonized the heroes and martyrs of the 1916 rebellion against England, but for a century the Irish-born British-raised Casement has been quietly erased from the record. Once knighted for his work in the British colonies overseas, Casement switched sides to fight for the liberation of his own people and was hailed as a hero of the Irish rising until his treason trial revealed homosexual affairs, which turned sexually conservative Irish Catholics against him. Doran's graphic novel debut seeks to return Casement to his place in history with a nuanced portrait of a man whose life defies categorization. Skipping through time and place in rough, impressionistic ink sketches, this is less a historical record than a poetic evocation. The timeline is sometimes hard to follow, especially for newbies to Irish history, and the art too frequently defaults to talking heads. But Casement is an electric figure, his story stranger than fiction, and this well-researched and thoughtful book provides a fine introduction.
