Hakim's Odyssey: Book 1: From Syria to Turkey - by Fabien Toulme & Hanna Chute (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Originally published as L'Odyssâee d'Hakim, volume 1 by Fabien Toulmâe, Editions Delcourt, 2018."

Book Synopsis

What does it mean to be a "refugee"? It is easy for those who live in relative freedom to ignore or even to villainize people who have been forced to flee their homes. After all, it can be hard to identify with others' experiences when you haven't been in their shoes.

In Hakim's Odyssey, we see firsthand how war can make anyone a refugee. Hakim, a successful young Syrian who had his whole life ahead of him, tells his story: how war forced him to leave everything behind, including his family, his friends, his home, and his business. After the Syrian uprising in 2011, Hakim was arrested and tortured, his town was bombed, his business was seized by the army, and members of his family were arrested or disappeared. This first leg of his odyssey follows Hakim as he travels from Syria to Lebanon, Lebanon to Jordan, and Jordan to Turkey, where he struggles to earn a living and dreams of one day returning to his home.

This graphic novel is necessary reading for our time. Alternately hopeful and heartbreaking, Hakim's Odyssey is a story about what it means to be human in a world that sometimes fails to be humane.

Review Quotes

"Hakim's story adds to the growing body of graphic literature on the refugee experience, with insightful perspective on how an ordinary life can crumble." - PUBLISHERS WEEKLY


BOOKLIST (STARRED) -- French graphic creator Toulmé transforms "the words that were entrusted" to him into this stupendous testimony of survival. The first of three volumes (the subsequent two have published in France and are scheduled to be published in the U.S. in 2022) begins with Toulmé's personal attempt to humanize the horrific immigration statistics, among which "Syrians make up the vast majority of the refugees trying to get to Europe." A journalist friend led Toulmé to Hakim. Within the first 10 pages, readers know that Hakim has been living in Aix-en-Provence since 2015, but his labyrinthine path from homeland to safety will reveal years of dangerous, challenging displacements. In Syria, Hakim was a gardener managing his own nursery, successful enough to buy his own apartment. By 2011, war destroyed life as he knew it. As chaos ensued, Hakim was imprisoned and tortured without cause, and his younger brother disappeared. Leaving was his only option, taking him through Lebanon, Jordan, then Turkey-desperately searching for ways to help his family back home. Toulmé affectingly uses a palette of blues, purples, and reds for his present-day exchanges with Hakim, then renders the past in browns and blues; his art is invitingly sublime throughout. Chute deftly translates. Volume 1 ends in the midst of another transition, leaving captivated readers only wanting more, more, more.

About the Author

Fabien Toulmé is the creator of Ce n'est pas toi que j'attendais and Les Deux Vies de Baudouin. He has published two subsequent volumes in the Hakim's Odyssey series, translations of which are forthcoming from Graphic Mundi.