JUSTICE

Khatri offers a graphic novel about the human costs of the Nepali civil war, illustrated by Santra and Lilamani.

The story in this work is quite simple, but it’s posed in a setting that will be unfamiliar to many readers: a conflict that flamed to life when Maoist rebels revolted against the Nepalese government in 1996. As the story opens in 2009, a young Nepalese woman named Tara is returning to her family’s village after being driven from her home four years ago by the expansion of the war. As she walks around the old home, the action flashes back to her past life there with her family of simple farmers: her father, Punya; her mother, Dhanamaya; her younger sister, Maya; and her older brother, Sudeep. They grow their crops, tend to their livestock, and take no part in the politics roiling outside their peaceful valley. “All we had was each other,” the narration goes, “and we were happy.” This happiness is gradually darkened by the nearby carnage, particularly after a failed cease-fire in 2003. Tara’s father is told that the Maoists want him to rebel against his landlord by refusing to farm his lands despite Punya’s protests that he needs his crops to feed his family. In 2004, revolutionary soldiers come to the farmhouse seeking shelter, which puts the family’s safety in further jeopardy. Khatri’s decision to keep the action to a minimum and the scope of her story local is a wise one; it encourages the reader to focus on the human face of the conflict and the effect of war on civilians. Another decision is less effective: The illustrations in the graphic novel’s first half by Santra are almost childlike in their simplicity, whereas the second half, drawn mainly in black-and-white by Lilamani, tells the exact same story with more photorealistic flair, which tends to draw attention to the artwork and away from the emotional impact of the events; a single artist would have been more effective.

A touching graphic novel about a simple family caught up in a civil war that’s hampered by odd illustrative choices.