Habibi

Habibi. This is a great work. It's important on a number of levels, and it kind of throws you for a loop. Yes, it's a graphic novel, but children really shouldn't be reading this thing. It's definitely R-rated, but it's not trying to be adult per se: The story that Craig Thompson's trying to tell brings the characters and, therefore, the reader through some very adult territory. It's drawn well, too: It reminds me of no less than Eisner.

But above all of this, Habibi pumps huge volumes of material out of the Islamic world. No, it's by no means a religious book per se, but it draws on the Quran, middle eastern poetry and mythology, and Islamic number mysticism, and it does so in a way that supports the characters quest(s) throughout their lives. Of course, what they undergo is a lot of the time incredibly harsh, but this is the nature of some great stories, and they interact with their cultural and faith traditions to find a way through. By the end, you are not only dazzled by their story, but by the incredible richness off middle eastern culture. It's the kind of book that really opens doors and that I suspect, in some of the ultra-conservative regimes, a reminder of how much has been jettisoned in the quest for cultural and moral 'purity'. (For instance, is the full unabridged 1001 Nights permitted in Saudi Arabia? What about those crazy and wonderful poems of Rumi and Hafiz? What about some of the Spanish Sufi esoterica? I doubt it, but a google search will hopefully let me know I'm wrong.)