Habibi is a confident, powerfully drawn graphic novel, telling its tale with passion, humor and an endless understanding of the human condition. Themes of spirituality help inform a distinctive epic tale. While his earlier, award-winning Blankets displayed the work of a talented up-and-coming storyteller, Habibi shows us a brilliant artist who has come into his own.
Dodola is sold as a child bride to a scribe, who teaches her to read and write in Arabic. Soon widowed and taken by roving slavers, Dodola escapes with an young African slave boy, Zam, and they hide in the desert just outside the city of a powerful sultan. Separated by Zam's forays into the desert as an adolescent and Dodola's capture by the sultan for his harem, the two live separate lives, told through lush and complex drawings. Both the plot itself and correlated stories of the Qur'an--strikingly similar to Judeo-Christian biblical stories--play a role in engaging the intellect and the emotions of the reader.
The themes in this book include the struggle between powerful men and the women they control, the poor underclass and the rich palace city and, of course, the struggle of all humans between their inner and outer selves. Industry arrives in the area as well--a silent, malevolent presence in the background, affecting the people in its implacable way. Love conquers all, yet not always in the manner the characters--and by extension, readers--wish it to. --Rob LeFebvre, freelance writer and editor