Comic books are, unfortunately, rarely nominated for, let alone win, mainstream literature awards. So when Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina found itself on the longlist of the Man Booker Prize earlier this year, it made news, as well as courted controversy, for being the first “graphic novel” to make the list. However, Sabrina hasn’t made it to the Booker shortlist, which was released last week.

Most people still feel comic books are not for the serious. It is as though the overlay of art and text to narrate a story somehow strips the books of literary merit and depth. Their readers too are looked down upon as people who refuse to grow up. But loyal followers of the genre will roll their eyes at these prejudices, which the art form has been grappling with for decades.

One could be forgiven for assuming that Art Spiegelman’s Maus would have changed mindsets about comics.

Often hailed as the “greatest comic book ever written”, Maus, in 1992, became the first, and so far the only graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize. Spiegelman, who was part of the underground “comix” movement in the 1970s, interviewed his father and recounted his parents’ experiences of surviving the Holocaust through serialised stories in the form of a comic book. Most notably, he depicted the Jews as mice, Germans as cats, and Poles as pigs in the book.

Drnaso’s Sabrina is different — neither a memoir nor non-fiction, but a dark and depressing portrayal of the great American nightmare spiralling out of control, resembling a suburban dystopian drama on the surface.

Sabrina, a middle-aged woman, has gone missing. We learn that she has been murdered a few steps from her home in Chicago, and the act has been caught on film. Someone is mysteriously sending the video recordings of the senseless act of crime to news channels to air.

Battling grief and stricken with loss, Sabrina’s sister Sandra and boyfriend Teddy are dealing with the ordeal in their own way. A month on, Teddy, who is barely able to cope and is quite visibly on the brink of a nervous breakdown, moves in with his high school friend Calvin, who works with the Air Force and is separated from his wife and daughter. Their lives get further entangled in the 24x7 news cycle web after right-wing conspiracy theorists start circulating rumours about the crime and the alleged involvement of Sabrina’s near and dear ones and the State.

There’s a poignant moment in the story when Sandra reads out the letters she has been receiving in the wake of her sister’s killing. “I don’t buy this story,” writes one person to her. “I don’t really believe anything I’m told from the verified sources... This whole thing is fake. It’s a f***ing lie. It doesn’t make any sense. Where is she?”

Sabrina is set in a pre-Donald Trump America and it captures the hopelessness and helplessness of a people falling prey to misinformation and fake news, which in turn fuels paranoia and warped belief systems — an all-too-familiar reality for anyone who is reading the book at the present moment.

It exposes the anger, ignorance, bigotry, anguish and frustration festering in the comment sections of online news stories and opinion pieces, as well as every case of social media trolling. Drnaso deftly pieces together the portioned lives of his disaffected characters, while painting the vagaries of urban loneliness and ennui in all their florid hues.

His manual-book style of illustrations and colouring is almost too easy to the eye. It also faintly resembles the work and art of comic-book writer Chris Ware, who also hails from Chicago and is most notably known for his book Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth and his inimitable covers for The New Yorker . What is most impressive about Drnaso’s art is how he beautifully contextualises the lighting of a mood, a room, dusk and dream/nightmare through the subtlest shifts of colour tones in his panels.

 

BLinkSabrinaBookCover

SabrinaNick DrnasoGranta FictionRs 1,199

 

Sabrina makes for a pointedly relevant and compelling read to understand the implications of the post-truth world we find ourselves in today.

A world that looks increasingly devoid of empathy and compassion, where truth is stripped of its essential meaning and, sadly, no longer has the agency to set one free.

In a Twitter thread, writer Joanne Harris took on critics who feel graphic novels have no place in the longlist of the Man Booker, by making a succinct case for Sabrina and why it must be read. She says: “Graphic novels contain more diversity, inclusivity and innovation than any area of ‘mainstream’ literature. And graphic novelists dare to tell the stories that other writers of literary fiction can sometimes find too challenging to attempt.”

Jairaj Singh is a New Delhi-based writer and journalist