Is Joe Sacco the World’s Greatest Graphic Noveliest/Reporter? The French Say “Oui”

By Olivia Snaije

The Maltese-born American cartoonist and journalist Joe Sacco has just won the public news radio station France Info’s 2011 news and comic book prize for the French edition of his 400-page graphic novel Footnotes in Gaza.

This is the second time Sacco has won the France Info prize—he was awarded the prize in 1999 for his graphic novel Palestine.

Sacco’s work is well known in France, where graphic novelists are worshipped and considered stars. He is very pleased, he said in a recent radio interview, with the French edition.

The latest edition of the Paris-based XXI magazine features an original Sacco reportage on the lives of farmers in India who belong to the Dalit, or erstwhile “untouchable” caste. The magazine editors commissioned Sacco in 2010 and translated the text into French. He is currently working on a series on poverty in the US.

Sacco will be present at the prestigious 4-day Angouleme International Comics Festival, which kicks off January 27 where Footnotes in Gaza is also in the official competition.