Klezmer è una musica dal tempo strappato, una musica a brandelli, una musica in rosso e bianco, sangue su neve, che ha lo humour e la nostalgia del grande filosofo Charlie Chaplin.
(da qualche parte all'inizio) ( )

I liked the graphic novel well enough, but the notes at the end are superb! ( )

Great surprise
Incredible drawings, reading pace almost like a ballad. The way Sfar mixes prose and tales is magnificent. The characters are distinct and each has their own voice, desires, and goals. I love the way he uses only one sort of pen, handwriting that is almost incomprehensible that wraps around the drawings, and a way of coloring that gives a totally instinctive air to create something beautiful, rhythmic, and deeply involving. ( )

Klezmer is a short graphic novel set in what Joann Sfar calls the "Wild East," Eastern Europe about a century ago. It tells of a disparate group of misfits who come together to form a klezmer band. One is the only survivor of an ambush of his musical troop, one a runaway bride, two of them are rabbinical students thrown out of their yeshiva, and the final is a gypsy. The group only gets together in the end when they all meet each other in Odessa, which launches a "to be continued" for the second volume -- which unfortunately has not been translated into English.

Like all of Sfar's work, the drawing is marvelous. The story is often dark and, with the Cossacks roaming around, sometimes brutal, but also has extended lyrical sections that attempt to depict the music.

The book is an interesting counterpoint to Sfar's Rabbi's Cat. Rabbi's Cat (an even better book) is set in French Algeria, at the opposite end of Jewry of Odessa. Both books feature a woman who is drawn identically -- Chava in this and Zlabya in Rabbi's Cat -- but have almost opposite characters. ( )

This unusual graphic novel set in the shtetls of pre-World War II Eastern Europe is by the also unusual Joann Sfar (a male), a prolific author who is the son of a Sephardic father and an Ashkenazi mother. While I didn’t much care for either the darkness of this story about a group of itinerant and dissimilar misfits who form a klezmer band, or the very expressionist watercolor illustrations, I did enjoy the section featuring an exploration of Odessa, and even more so, the extensive appendix, “Notes for KLEZMER, Volume 1.” I think this particular thought from the Appendix on religiosity is worth quoting:

“I believe God loves those moments when we do without him. He thinks, ‘At last, they’re going to stop walking around with their nose up in the air awaiting some supernatural magic; they’re going to watch the snow and the trees and start to think a bit. They’re doing the job without me, inventing utopias that don’t have me as their essence; they are finding within themselves the reason for all things. In fact, without realizing it, they are understanding my Law, for it is the Law of the world.”

I loved this also:

“True to the idea that you’re better off practicing useless activities than doing harm, I put my memories into klezmer songs.”

Sfar observes that the graphic novel asks a lot of readers, and I agree. I think I am not always up to the task. But I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this book - it has a magic that grows on you if you do the work demanded of a reader of this genre.

Note: This book has adult themes. ( )