Living overseas—it’s one of those experiences that separates the men from the boys, the courageous from the cowards, the adventurous from the namby-pamby….and I hope it’s OK to describe myself this way!

I’ve lived overseas for—let’s see now—nine years of my life, and only COVID has prevented me from continuing that trend. Foreign cultures can be wickedly different from what a person’s used to back home, but they’re also unbelievably fascinating and well worth one’s time to explore.

Few traveling writers that I’ve ever read have such a keen eye for cultural cues as Guy Delisle, the French graphic novelist. I’m not talking about “culture” like how standard books stereotypically view it—-“The Chinese eat rice.” “Africans like animals.” “Russians can drink.” I mean true culture, like a given people’s behaviors and mores or the unspoken beliefs that drive local customs.

Guy Delisle is an expert observer who rarely questions his subjects but instead constantly explores, watches, and listens. With an artist’s eye, he notices more than most travelers would ever catch. He lives and writes by anecdote, recognizing the uniqueness of a scene or phrase or personality. I would equate his skill to that of Paul Theroux who could turn long, mundane train rides into fascinating sociological studies. But whereas Theroux colored his world with wit and words, Guy Delisle captures his in boxy comics with minimal text.

I’ve read Delisle before, in his book Shenzhen (2006), which explores Chinese culture around the time I first arrived on that scene. He had traveled there to work as a consultant on a Chinese cartoon, and he had quite a time adjusting.

In Jerusalem, Delisle is less burdened by the need for work and more focused on simply exploring the Holy Land. He’s traveled there with his girlfriend, who works for the French branch of Doctors without Borders, and their two children. He essentially becomes a stay-at-home soccer dad whose main responsibility is to make sure the kids get to and from school. The rest of the day is his to spend, and he spends much of it walking or driving the region sketching whatever catches his eye.

Delisle’s initial opinions of life in Jerusalem center around the awful smells and broke-down-ness of the city. As he inches further and further out, however, he comes to see new and intriguing scenes.

Much of his focus is on both the Wall splitting the region, the settlements of displaced Palestinians and Jews, all the new arrivals, and the ethno-religious differences of the people peppering the land. I don’t get a sense that he’s ever for one side over and other, though he does appear to have a penchant for “putting the Jews in their place” by refusing to share just one side of the story.

Delisle’s research seems deep, and his understanding of the region goes slightly beyond shallow, which is impressive, seeing as he lived in the region for only a year! He’s rarely preachy and even refuses to get philosophical throughout the book, but occasionally his opinions do stain his sleeve. On page 309, for example, he writes about a Jewish tour guide who shares only one side of a 1929 massacre:

Telling the stories of these massacres in just a few sentences seems like a convenient way to pass off the other side as the embodiment of evil. It’ll always be easier to fight others if you reduce them to a single word or look at them just one way.

I truly enjoy this style of travelogue, and I don’t know enough about non-fiction comics to tell if there are other authors doing the same thing as successfully as this French-speaking Canadian. Delisle uses some fowl language at times in this book, so it’s not really a travelogue for kids, despite the genre. Beware of that and of his Gnostic (or perhaps Atheistic) worldview. He would never call Jerusalem or Israel “The Holy Land,” but he does treat it like a holy grail of sorts for all the inspiring scenes it has to offer.

If you’ve ever traveled to Jerusalem (or plan to), you’ll get a special kick from this book. I’ve never gone and don’t see myself ever making it over, but Delisle’s book helps me realize that I’m not missing much. What was once the land of Christ is now nothing more than a land of bigotry and souvenirs. Not really a place I want to spend my time!

I recommend this book highly and can’t wait til I can find Pyongyang or Burma Chronicles somewhere. These books are a treasure trove of cultural studies.

©2021 E.T.

Read More from Guy Delisle:

• Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China (2006)
• Burma Chronicles (2008)
• Jerusalem (2012)
• Hostage (2017)