A review by jwinchell
Zenobia by Morten Dürr

4.0

I think it’s courageous when a graphic novel relies heavily on pictures to tell a story and evoke a sense of place. Zenobia has sparse text and that really works. It’s the story of a Syrian refugee, told in flashbacks from her attempted escape on a boat to her time at home with her mom and her uncle’s rescue of her. The pages of devastation in her Syrian village were so powerful. They resonate with images and video I’ve seen (most notably the film The White Helmets), but it was so moving to see her and her uncle so small, moving through that devastation. The ending is heartbreaking but real. War takes too much beauty.