Description: Part Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Art Spiegelman's Maus, Danila Botha's powerful debut graphic novel, follows young Vidal who grows up in Tiberias (Ottoman Empire and then British Mandate Palestine) and moves to Paris to pursue his art and freedom and gets trapped there during World War II.
Brief description:
DANILA BOTHA is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I've Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards, and the ReLit Award, and most recently, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness. The title story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The collection won an Indie Reader Discovery Award for Women's Issues, Fiction, and was a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, and the National Indie Excellence Book Awards. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much On the Inside which was optioned for film. Her most recent novel is A Place for People Like Us (October 2025). Vidal is her debut graphic novel. She lives in Toronto.
Review Quotes: "Vidal himself is flawed and that is important. We have a tendency to turn Holocaust survivors into saints but that does a disservice to them. Vidal is not an angel, and it is OK to say so. I mean, who could resist a blue-haired, blue-glasses femme fatale."--Natalie Fingerhut "The Seaboard Review of Books" (7/20/2026 12:00:00 AM)