Smuggling Patriotism: Notes for a War Story, by Gipi
Notes for a War Story
by Gipi
Translated from the Italian by Spectrum
First Second Books, 2007. 125 pages.
This gripping coming-of-age graphic novel warns us that the experience of mass trauma can erupt anywhere, anytime. The cause of this war isn’t revenge, however, it’s patriotism with its attendant voraciousness. And you don’t know how you’ll act until it finds you.
Notes for a War Story follows three teenage boys through a fictional war torn country that looks and sounds a lot like Italy.
San Donato. San Giuliano. San Martino. Where we’re from, all the villages had saints’ names. When they bombed a village it felt like they had really hurt somebody. Not a village but a town, an individual person.
Giuliano is a runaway from a middle class family who joins up with two street kids, Christian and Little Killer. Together they scratch out a simple existence in bombed out buildings until they meet the gang lord Felix. Felix is a local tough who peddles illegal goods on the black market (we never learn what the mysterious items are.) The allure of easy money draws the boys deeper and deeper into Felix’s schemes. Soon the three friends must pit themselves against the Russian mafia, and eventually, the guns of war.
