Hostage

"Christophe André, a Doctors Without Borders administrator assigned to the Caucasus region in 1997, spends the bulk of Guy Delisle’s 432-page graphic memoir in darkness, chained to a radiator in a largely empty room. The account of André’s experience as a hostage, dictated to Delisle years later by the man himself, would be powerful enough, if depicted in prose alone. But it’s Delisle’s art – his character design, his use of page and panel layout to underscore the mind-numbing sameness of solitary confinement while controlling the story’s mood and pacing – that makes us feel André’s plight so deeply. We keep turning pages fearfully, hungrily, plowing on along with him, vibrating in the tension between word and image, terror and hope."