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In the spring of 2021, Zerocalcare travels to Iraq, to visit the Ezid community of Shengal, threatened by international tensions and protected by Kurdish militias, and document their living conditions and struggle. The journey proves difficult because several times the Italian delegation is turned back at the various checkpoints controlled by the different political and military forces that share control of Iraqi soil. This comic book is a snapshot of a precise geopolitical moment, in which a handful of people oppose the overwhelming power of those who call any attempt at resistance ‘terrorism’, while the power structures slowly change, and the dream of democratic confederalism in a too-often-forgotten piece of Mesopotamia risks vanishing forever, in the deafening indifference of the West.


Zerocalcare, pseudonym of Michele Rech, is an Italian cartoonist. His first comic book, La profezia dell’armadillo, Graficart, was published in 2011 and then reissued by Bao Publishing. Among his most recent titles, all published by Bao Publisging, are Kobane calling (2016), La scuola di pizze in faccia del professor Calcare (2019), Scheletri (2020), A babbo morto (2020), Niente di nuovo sul fronte di Rebibbia (2021), No sleep till Shengal (2022) and Animation Art Book (2023).

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