Graphic Novel Review: ‘Year of the Rabbit’

[CEOCambodiaNews]

Graphic Novel Review: ‘Year of the Rabbit’ by Tian Veasna from Drawn+Quarterly
Jeff Provine 1 day ago

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna from Drawn+Quarterly presents an especially poignant view of the Khmer Rouge by showing it through human eyes. Rather than giving a historical synopsis on political factions, Veasna’s story is told through the people who survived the nightmare that killed nearly two million people. As a number, this is staggering, but seeing the lives being lived adds to the haunting realism of one of the greatest tragedies in human history.

Veasna drafted Year of the Rabbit through interviews with family beginning in 1975 with the Khmer Rouge seizing Phnom Penh to the regime’s overthrow by the Vietnamese in 1979 and their adoptions of new lives abroad. There is the exception of his Aunt Chenda, whom Veasna describes in the denouement as having such pain in her loss that “she doesn’t want to hear about Cambodia anymore,” instead becoming fully Canadian with Country music and TV.

Adding together the details of the other survivors and historical context, Veasna begins the story with a doctor, soon to be his father upon Tian’s birth, rummaging through hospital cupboards to what supplies he would need for a baby’s delivery. He drives through a city where some crowds cheer the military parading through the streets and impromptu checkpoints with armed men trying to maintain some sort of order...
https://blogcritics.org/graphic-novel-r ... quarterly/

[CEOCambodiaNews]

4 February 2020
Rachel Cooke
Review from The Guardian: Graphic Novel of the Month

Year of the Rabbit by Tian Veasna review – art that speaks volumes
Exquisite images bear eloquent witness to a powerful account of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge



I feel more and more that comics are capable of dealing even with the most difficult of subjects – an ability that has to do, I think, with their relative lack of words. Unlike a novel, they can make full use of silence. Pain may be seen in a glance on the faces of their characters; foreboding may be found in the sky and the trees. Tian Veasna’s brilliant and powerful book about the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and the experiences of his family under the regime, is a case in point. Its storytelling is extremely nimble, making easy work of complex political history. But it’s also exquisitely spare. Sometimes, there is nothing to be said; no words are adequate. In these moments, Veasna lets his brush do the talking. Like a bird, he soars above the country where he was born, gazing down on its gutted cities, on its workers slaving in the fields. The documentary precision of his landscapes seems to do the work of a thousand written pages.
Full article: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/ ... ian-veasna

[CEOCambodiaNews]

Another international review of this well regarded Cambodian graphic novel:

Horrors of Khmer Rouge captured in powerful graphic novel that’s gripping but never gruesome
Year of the Rabbit is a moving account of one family’s experiences under the murderous reign of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia
Written, drawn and narrated by a survivor, the graphic novel offers English-language readers an accessible entrée to the horrors of the Khmer Rouge
Farah Abdessamad
Published: 5:00am, 21 Feb, 2020

https://www.scmp.com/print/lifestyle/ar ... ovel-thats