Naji al-Ali (1936-87) grew up in the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain al-Hilweh in southern Lebanon. His gift for drawing was discovered by the Palestinian poet Ghassan Kanafani in the late 1950s. Early the following decade he moved to Kuwait, embarking on a thirty-year career that would see his cartoons published daily in newspapers from Cairo to Beirut, London to Paris. In 1987, he was assassinated in London. His killers have never been found.
This is a ground-breaking book. For the first time, Western readers are beckoned into Palestinian lives by the graphic warmth, inspiration and horror of the cartoonist Naji al-Ali, whose iconic Hanthala is our witness and conscience, imploring, rightly, that we never forget. -- John Pilger