Lebanon Is Burning and Other Dispatches

Voices from the Middle East on the fight for self-determination.

Much of the present discourse about the pro-democracy Arab uprisings of 2011 paints a bleak picture of their defeat. But the truth is more complicated, and moments of struggle and inspiration still recur despite the overwhelming odds against the movements’ success.

This collection of short comics documents the political and social unrest in the Middle East during the 2010s, in such places as Lebanon, Egypt, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, and Bahrain. A collaboration between writer and journalist Yazan Al-Saadi and a lineup of stellar cartoonists from the region—Tracy Chahwan, Ganzeer, Ghadi Ghosn, Omar Khouri, Sirène Moukheiber, Hicham Rahma, and Enas Satir—this graphic reportage serves as a witness to an era of counterrevolutionary resurgence in which entrenched powers clashed with the people’s struggle for self-determination.

Yazan Al-Saadi is a Kuwait-born Syrian who holds a Canadian passport. He has lived in seven countries across three continents over the course of his life, and since 2012 he has lived and written in Beirut, Lebanon. He has worked as a researcher, a newspaper and online journalist and editor, a creative content and communications officer for a medical international humanitarian organization, and a political analyst and commentator.