Helge Dascher Book order (chronological)

Jérôme Ruilier was born in 1966 in Madagascar and has lived much of his adult life in France. After spending the first dozen years of his career as a children's book illustrator, in 2009 he wrote and drew his first graphic novel, Le Coeur-enclume, a deeply personal account of the first six days following the birth of a child with disabilities. His next graphic novel, Les Mohamed, was based on interviews with immigrants from North Africa conducted by the writer Yamina Benguigui, which explored the challenges that many immigrants in France face as they attempt to integrate in a new society. The Strange is Ruillier's first graphic novel translated into English.

HOW DOES ONE SURVIVE WHEN ALL HOPE IS LOST? In the middle of the night in 1997, Doctors Without Borders administrator Christophe Andre was kidnapped by armed men and taken away to an unknown destination in the Caucasus region. For three months, Andre was kept handcuffed in solitary confinement, with little to survive on and almost no contact with the outside world. Close to twenty years later, award-winning cartoonist Guy Delisle (Pyongyang, Jerusalem, Shenzhen, Burma Chronicles) recounts Andre's harrowing experience in Hostage, a book that attests to the power of one man's determination in the face of a hopeless situation. Marking a departure from the author's celebrated first-person travelogues, Delisle tells the story through the perspective of the titular captive, who strives to keep his mind alert as desperation starts to set in. Working in a pared down style with muted colour washes, Delisle conveys the psychological effects of solitary confinement, compelling us to ask ourselves some difficult questions regarding the repercussions of negotiating with kidnappers and what it really means to be free. Thoughtful, intense, and moving, Hostage takes a profound look at what drives our will to survive in the darkest of moments.

Acclaimed graphic memoirist Delisle returns with a thoughtful and moving travelogue about life in East Jerusalem and his involvement with the brutal, three-week Gaza War.