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Carol Isaacs' The Wolf Of Baghdad Launched at London's Cartoon Museum (VIDEO)

Published Fri, 17 Jan 2020 11:00:52 -0600

Last updated Tue, 30 Jun 2020 05:26:51 -0500

Cartoonist Carol Isaacs launched her first graphic novel The Wolf of Baghdad at the Cartoon Museum in London last night. Attended by the likes of Martin Rowson, Steven Appleby, Mark Stafford, Jess Sage and more. They even let me in. There was music, punch, and turkish delights. Here's a look at the presentation (in silhouette) by Corinne Pearlman, from publishers Myriad, and some shots from the night.

In the 1940s a third of Baghdad's population was Jewish. Within a decade nearly all 150,000 had been expelled, killed or had escaped. This graphic memoir of a lost homeland is a wordless narrative by an author homesick for a home she has never visited.

Transported by the power of music to her ancestral home in the old Jewish quarter of Baghdad, the author encounters its ghost-like inhabitants who are revealed as long-gone family members. As she explores the city, journeying through their memories and her imagination, she at first sees successful integration, and cultural and social cohesion. Then the mood turns darker with the fading of this ancient community's fortunes.

This beautiful wordless narrative is illuminated by the words and portraits of her family, a brief history of Baghdadi Jews and of the making of this work. Says Isaacs: 'The Finns have a word, kaukokaipuu, which means a feeling of homesickness for a place you've never been to. I've been living in two places all my life; the England I was born in, and the lost world of my Iraqi-Jewish family's roots.'

Carol Isaacs will be touring The Wolf of Baghdad throughout 2020 at various venues and festivals around England. For more information please check her blog.

The Wolf Of Baghdad is published by Myriad Books later this month.

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