![]() It is, then, a book of bridges and connections and long-buried memories: a carefully researched edifice that often teeters but somehow never falls to the ground. What he seems to be saying – sometimes gently and sometimes with an edge of satire – is that the various people of the Book were once nourished by the same stories (and, in some quarters, still are). He has also, having clearly spent some time studying them, made magnificent use of Arabic calligraphy and Islamic geometry. Into Habibi, Thompson has merrily thrown stories from the Bible and the Qur'an, elements of the Arabian Nights and the poems of Rumi and Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, the great Iraqi writer. It's his ambition that really amazes, the sheer chutzpah of it. ![]() It's not only that it has at its heart a sweet and touching love story, nor is it that Thompson's drawings are as fluid and as acute as ever. Habibi is another big book and I think its effect on readers will be just as powerful. ![]()
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