Author: Will Eisner
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday
Rating: WORTHY!
This is a great graphic novel which takes a look at the story of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist from the PoV of Fagin. Note that I come into this having never read Olvier Twist - an omission I shall now have to make good, I guess!
Will Eisner, who actually has a book award named after him, was disturbed by how 'dishonest Jew' bigotry had grown from roots in stories like this and Shakespeare's Shylock character from The Merchant of Venice. Dickens was not anti-Semitic, and he was aware that his novel had caused issues. He sought to correct the erroneous view he'd created, but he was too late. It had already taken root in society.
We're introduced to Moses Fagin (why Eisner chose to refer to him as 'Moses' rather than 'Moishe', I don't know) as a youth and follow his sorry life, seeing his ambitions and dreams fall apart in the face of a harsh reality made worse by Fagin's own bad choices. Eisner draws a distinction between the Sephardic and the Ashkenazim Diaspora in England, the former coming from Portugal and Spain, the latter from Germany and Poland. Both groups migrated to escape anti-Semitic pogroms, but while the former were in general, a rather well-off and elite society, the Ashkenazim were people of the land, much poorer than the Sephardics.
Fagin falls into one problem after another and ends-up serving ten years hard labor in 'the colonies'. He returns to England with an entirely different outlook on life, and finds that he can make a pretty penny by employing children as thieves, and then fencing the stolen property. This is where the story joins up with the Dickens original.
This is illustrated as a sepia-tone novel, and it's well written, and well thought-out. The artwork is really good and very endearing, and the story makes for engaging reading. I recommend this graphic novel.
