Creator
Tian Veasna
Cambodian-born graphic novelist in France whose Year of the Rabbit documents his family's experience of the Khmer Rouge period.
Tian Veasna is a French-Cambodian cartoonist and illustrator in France whose first book is the graphic novel Year of the Rabbit.[1][2] He has worked in publishing and has taught visual art.[1]
Career
Veasna graduated from the École des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg in 2001. He then returned to Cambodia for the first time and taught drawing classes as part of a United Nations humanitarian project.[1] He cofounded Le Bocal, a workshop and gallery space for illustration and graphic art.[1][3]
Year of the Rabbit
Year of the Rabbit was first released in French. The English translation by Helge Dascher was published by Drawn & Quarterly in Montreal on January 21, 2020.[4][5][3] Rithy Panh wrote the preface.[4]
The book tells the story of Veasna's parents and extended family under the Khmer Rouge. It begins in the days after the Khmer Rouge took Phnom Penh in 1975 and follows the family through the evacuation of the city, forced relocation to labor camps and their attempts to reach a refugee camp on the Thai border.[5][2] Veasna, who survived those years himself, learned the details of his family's experience only later, through interviews with surviving relatives.[4][5][6]
An omniscient narrator presents the family members' experiences and dilemmas.[4] Fine-lined pen-and-ink drawings are colored in pastels, with occasional touches of red.[5] Full-page maps and survival guides open the chapters, with information about avoiding trouble, daily life and market values under Khmer Rouge rule.[5] One insert explains behavior that could make a person look like a hidden enemy of Angkar, and the maps trace the family's route out of Cambodia.[6] The book records that by 2007, 19,733 communal graves had been inventoried in Cambodia, and that about 150 new graves are found each year.[4]
The story keeps its focus on how people lived from one day to the next, and it avoids gratuitous violence.[5] It still shows massacres, imprisonment and a trench of human remains.[2] Writing for Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow set the book beside other graphic works about genocide, including Maus.[7]
Works
- Year of the Rabbit (Book)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Drawn & Quarterly, Tian Veasna artist page
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 ArtReview, How Comic Books Can Make History
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Barnes & Noble, Year of the Rabbit (paperback listing, January 21, 2020)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 Asian Review of Books, "Year of the Rabbit" by Tian Veasna (February 12, 2020)
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 World Literature Today, Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna (Summer 2020)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Comics Journal, Year of the Rabbit (September 18, 2021)
- ↑ Drawn & Quarterly, Boing Boing features Year of the Rabbit (2020)