I Remember Beirut

Zeina Abirached was born into war, Lebanon's civil war that divided its capital, Beirut, in the '80s, and her graphic memoir, drawn in gorgeously blocky blacks and whites that will remind readers of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, never leaves a child's blinkered perspective, in which shrapnel is a toy to be collected during ceasefires and Transformers and a bad haircut carry the same dramatic import as a shell destroying a nearby building. It's a poignant portrait of the brutal absurdity of war, written for young readers but with a subtle irony that will have older readers turning back to read again from the beginning.