This morning, FirstSecondBooks has launched the first installment of Zahra's Paradise, an online web-comic that that details the ongoing social upheaval in Iran.
Here's the description of the project from FirstSecondBooks:
Set in the aftermath of Iran's fraudulent elections of 2009, Zahra's Paradise is the fictional story of the search for Mehdi, a young protestor who has disappeared in the Islamic Republic's gulags. Mehdi has vanished in an extrajudicial twilight zone where habeas corpus is suspended. What stops his memory from being obliterated is not the law. It is the grit and guts of a mother who refuses to surrender her son to fate and the tenacity of a brother--a blogger--who fuses culture and technology to explore and explode absence: the void in which Mehdi has vanished.
Zahra's Paradise weaves together a composite of real people and events. As the world witnessed what could no longer be kept from view, through YouTube videos, on Twitter and in blogs, so this story came to be and had to be told.
The author Amir is an Iranian-American human rights activist, journalist and documentary filmmaker. He has lived and worked in the United States, Canada, Europe and Afghanistan. His essays and articles have appeared far and wide in the press.
Khalil's work as a fine artist has been much praised. He sculpts and creates ceramics and has been cartooning since he was very young. Zahra's Paradise is his first graphic novel.
Amir and Khalil have long dreamed up projects together, but Zahra's Paradise draws on their talents as though they've been preparing for it all their lives--and through it, they answer the calling of their times.
The authors have chosen anonymity for obvious political reasons.
The first installment is live today, and they plan to publish new installments every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The ultimate plan is to publish the series in novelized form sometime in 2011, provided that President Barack Obama doesn't take the insane advice of some who believe he should bomb the bejeezus out of Iran to save his presidency.
[h/t: BoingBoing]
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