I said, ‘for me, it’s more interesting for the characters to be attached to the drama but not in the middle of it,’ and he said, ‘wow, that’s exactly like Exit Wounds.’ I said, ‘oh, I didn’t think about it, but actually, yes. That’s why she came to Israel before the war, because making her the victim is like saying that you can’t touch her. It’s funny because I met Joe Sacco at Angoulême a year ago and we were talking about this book and I said ‘It’s not a Holocaust book, but the Holocaust is in the background.’ I told him I didn’t want to make the grandmother a Holocaust victim. I said, ‘I’ll do a story about this young woman who is going with her grandmother to look at the property.’ I thought it would be a good combination of family relations and money and history, with the Holocaust in the background, but only in the background.
So one night I was lying in bed, just about to fall asleep when suddenly it just came to me. Maybe it’s not so much about being Jewish. It seems that everyone in the world has “a Yiddisher grandmother,” Italians, Koreans, Japanese, everyone. She was this tough, unpleasant old woman, the type that is called in the US “Yiddisher Mama” and in Israel “a Polish lady.” I got very emotional responses to this story in particular. The idea for The Property came to me after I finished “Mixed Emotions.” One of the stories was about my grandmother. In a recent interview with The Comics Journal, Rutu discussed her own background and family, as well as the influences and ideas that informed The Property : Like Exit Wounds, it's a book that deals with family, relationships, and harsh truths. Now six years(!) later, Rutu has brought a similar combination of wit, style and realism, to her second full-length graphic novel The Property. It's not surprising that they have invited many more cartoonists since. One of the first cartoonists to be invited to the literary festival, she was a witty, charming and down-to-earth advocate for both the medium and women in comics. I met Rutu in Toronto at the International Festival of Authors shortly after Exit Wounds. Set in modern-day Tel Aviv, and drawn and coloured in a beautiful, contemporary ‘ ligne claire’ style, the book is a portrait of modern Israel, a place where sudden death and dissolution of family ties is an everyday reality. ← Back to Blog Rutu Modan Returns with The PropertyĮxit Wounds by Rutu Modan, first published by Drawn Quarterly in 2007 (and now available in paperback), is one of my favourite debut graphic novels of recent years.
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