KOBANE CALLING is the autobiographical memoir of a young Italian cartoonist, writing and drawing under the nom-de-plume Zerocalcare, who volunteers with the Rojava Calling organization and heads into the Middle East to support and observe the Kurdish resistance in Syria as they struggle against the advancing forces of the Islamic State. He winds up in the small town of Mesher, near the Turkish-Syrian border as a journalist and aid worker, and from there he travels into Ayn al-Arab, a majority-Kurd town in the Rojava region of Syria. As he receives an education into the war from the Kurdish perspective, he meets the women fighting in the all-female Kurdish volunteer army (the Yekeineyen Parastina Jin, or Women’s Defense Units), struggling to simultaneously fight off the Islamic State even as they take strides for Kurdish independence and attempt a restructuring of traditional patriarchal Kurdish society. In a story and style at once humorous and heartbreaking, Zerocalcare presents clear-eyed reportage of the fight against the Islamic State from the front lines.
Originally published in the Italian weekly INTERNATIONAL, and then collected and expanded in an edition by Italian publisher BAO Publishing.
Kobane Calling è la graphic novel più seria e meno umoristica di Zerocalcare. L'autore è andato in Siria dai combattenti Curdi, arrivando fino a Kobane, e questo volume è un resoconto di quel viaggio.
Zerocalcare ci racconta storie difficili e vicende complicate, ma grazie al suo stile diretto e al suo humor è facile comprendere ciò che sta succedendo.
Oltre a questo, troviamo gli elementi tipici dei lavori di Zerocalcare: il suo umorismo, il suo modo di narrare storie, i suoi disegni. Tutte cose che, come sempre, apprezzo.
