Lutes’ work, however, is rooted in a kind of monochrome realism that can create a home theatre inside the reader’s head. Even the uninitiated may have heard of Art Speigelman’s classic Maus, which covers much of the same ground. I find it difficult to find words to describe Berlin to readers, especially those of you who haven’t bothered to explore the graphic novel genre. The tragic irony is that during that same period, the German state began to collapse as the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, aka the Nazis, viciously exploited every I seam of racism, resentment, and paranoia that existed in the settling gloom that infected German society in the aftermath of the nation’s crushing defeat in the First World War. The 580-page hardbound book, which was previously issued in serial form by Drawn & Quarterly starting back in 1994, tells the story of Germany’s Weimar Republic period from the viewpoint of a group of ordinary Germans living in Berlin during the brief cultural efflorescence of progressive art, music, literature, theatre, and nightlife in what was once the jewel of the Continent. Booksellers will be displaying the new work by this award-winning artist in the graphic novel section, but if any book published in the last decade or so illustrates the astoundingly powerful potential of storytelling in this format, Berlin is it.
Berlin, by Jason Lutes is a masterpiece of a historical novel that happens to be a graphic novel.
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