Berlín

Berlin, now compiled in a full paperback edition, is one of the most ambitious works ever made in graphic novel form. Jason Lutes distances himself from the great figures of politics, to focus, through the lives of a small group of Berliners, on the rise of fascism and the speed with which it can replace democracy. Most of the inhabitants of Berlin go about their day to day without realizing the threat that looms over their existence. Meanwhile, journalist Kurt Severing and artist Marthe Müller watch in horror as their society begins a dizzying descent into extremism. Berlin is a monumental work produced over twenty-two years that shows, through the eyes of ordinary people, the transformation of the German city from a liberal metropolis to a bulwark of fascism. Lutes began publishing Berlin, serialized, in 1996. It was chosen in 2005 as one of the 10 best graphic novels of all time by Time magazine. He has won five Eisner Awards, two Ignatz and one Harvey. Lutes confesses that he knew very little about World War II, but that a video he saw in history class about the concentration camps had a profound impact on him. "The image that stuck with me was that of a bulldozer pushing piles of bodies, piles of emaciated corpses into the graves," he confesses, horrified, noting that since then he has "tried to make sense of it". More than a decade later, when he had already started to draw Berlin, he realized that he had channeled his obsession into the city. He wanted to understand what happens before the disaster: "It is the period before the storm breaks and all hell breaks loose".