The Property

by Rutu Modan, Jessica Cohen (Translator)

Overview

The Property is a work that will inspire, fascinate, and delight readers and critics alike. Savvy and insightful, elegant and subtle, Rutu Modan’s second full-length graphic novel is a triumph of storytelling and fine lines. After the death of her son, Regina Segal takes her granddaughter Mica to Warsaw, hoping to reclaim a family property lost during the Second World War. As they get to know modern Warsaw, Regina is forced to recall difficult things about her past, and Mica begins to wonder if maybe their reasons for coming aren’t a little different than what her grandmother led her to believe. Modan offers up a world populated by prickly seniors, smart-alecky public servants, and stubborn women—a world whose realism is expressed alternately in the absurdity of people’s behavior and in the complex consequences of their sacrifices. Modan’s ever-present wit is articulated perfectly in her clear-line style, while a subtle, almost muted color palette complements the true-to-life nuances of her characterization. Exit Wounds made a huge splash for this signature combination of wit, style, and realism, and The Property will cement Modan’s status as one of the foremost cartoonists working today. Translated from the Hebrew by Jessica Cohen.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770461802
Publisher:	Drawn & Quarterly
Publication date:	04/22/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
Sales rank:	397,499
File size:	78 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	15 - 18 Years

About the Author

Rutu Modan is an Illustrator, comics artist, and associate professor at the Bezalel Academy of Art & Design in Jerusalem. After publishing several comic strips in the Israeli media, Modan co-founded the Actus Comics group. In 2008 her book Exit Wounds won the Eisner Award. Her 2013 graphic novel The Property won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel, the Special Jury Prize in the International Comics Festival in Angouleme, France, and the first prize for best book of the year in Lucca Comics & Games Festival, Italy. Modan’s comics and children’s books have been translated into 15 languages. In 2013 she cofounded an independent publishing house specialising in comics for young children.

Editorial Reviews

Modan (Exit Wounds) has proven to be one of the most accessible of graphic novelists, with a cinematic presentation and the ability to capture the complexity of larger human experience within smaller family dramas. Her latest work takes readers on a trip to Warsaw with Mica and her grandmother, Regina, both from Israel. Their purpose in Poland is to check on some long lost property that Regina’s father owned prior to the Holocaust; she fled during the war, thus becoming the only family member to survive. The understanding that families were fractured and lives rerouted after WWII is nothing new, but the particulars provide the story here—family secrets and the measure of shame, historical and current attitudes between Poles and Jews, the changing views of cross-culture collusion when a hint of romance is involved, and the ways in which we don’t so much reinvent ourselves as repurpose. The pursuit of old family documents is concurrent with the unearthing of family secrets, but Modan doesn’t dole out the revelations with alarm or melodrama, but rather with a casual good nature toward her subjects, backed up with art somewhat reminiscent of Tintin but revealing the deepest memories of guilt and loss with merely the twitch of a line. A beautiful, fully realized story that’s as much “novel” as “graphic”. (June)

Publishers Weekly

Modan is masterful at creating complex motivations, exploring the confusion her characters create in each other and, more fundamentally, in themselves.” —Los Angeles Times

“My comic book of the year, by a mile, is Rutu Modan's The Property... in which Mica Segal, a young Israeli woman, travels to Warsaw with her irascible grandmother to help her reclaim the apartment building she and her family were forced to give up in 1940...This, believe me, has everything you could possibly want in a comic: great pictures, a multilayered story, mystery, sharp wit.” —The Guardian's Graphic Books of the Year

“What The Property most resembles is an excellent independent film, full of nuanced performances and funny lines... Modan's artwork is lovely and understated; it's the cleverness of her storytelling that shines brightest here.” —Salon.com's Unforgettable Graphic Novels of 2013

“Modan's clear line art delineates the complex web of loves, lies, and invented pasts. This beautifully realized narrative shows how history shapes us but cannot destroy us.” —Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2013

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