Back to Al Bak: A Graphic Novel

When Dwa left his birthplace at the age of eight, the village of Alatsinainy Bakaro (Al Bak) had no electricity or running water. Now, he is about to return to the tiny highlands village after twenty-seven years of living in the capital city of Antananarivo. With no family left in the village, he resorts to posting a message on Facebook. A local family responds and invites him to stay with them, without knowing that—by sheer chance—they hold the same positions at the regional junior high school that Dwa’s parents had. Returning to his origins, in the home of a family that could easily have been his own, Dwa falls deep into nostalgia for his childhood. But understanding is hard to come by, and it is a tremendous challenge to reconcile his two worlds, so very different from each other. In the rural highlands of Madagascar, being an artist isn’t a job, and creating graphic novels as a career is an entirely foreign concept. But this journey that Dwa takes—and takes the reader on with him—is made all the richer for its reflections, quandaries, and considerations. In Back to Al Bak, full-page watercolors alternate with comic-strip exchanges to craft a rich and sensitive portrait of Dwa’s journey back through time and memory.