Vals med Bashir

Unlike any other book on war, a graphic novel about one Israeli soldier’s time in Beirut during the massacres at Sabra and Shatila


One night in Beirut in September 1982, while Israeli soldiers secured the area, a Christian militia invaded the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila and massacred three thousand Palestinians. Ari Folman was one of those Israeli soldiers, but for more than twenty years he remembered nothing of that night. Then came a friend’s disturbing dream and with it Folman’s need to excavate the truth of the war in Lebanon and answer the crucial question: What was he doing during the hours of slaughter at Sabra and Shatila?

Stunningly original in form, Waltz with Bashir follows Folman’s journey deep into the darkness of Beirut. Drawing on the stories of other soldiers and his own returning fragments of memory, Folman painfully and candidly pieces together the war and his place in it: the senselessness of the soldiers’ orders; the fear that pervades every moment; the casual bloodshed of civilians, culminating in the massacres themselves.

The result is a visual work that is as shocking as it is beautiful. An indictment of violence of extraordinary power, Waltz with Bashir will take its place as one of the great works of wartime reportage.