As we learn from this Canadian cartoonist (Delisle comes from the Belle Province of Quebec), "tweens" are images needed to recompose a movement in a cartoon, between two "keys" drawn by chief animators. Boring stuff : one slight change at a time, no creativity involved... so studios outsource "tweens" to cheap labor countries.
Such as North Korea, where the author had to sojourn a few months to monitor the process.
"Pyongyang" is a graphic novel depicting the tweens between two flights.
Don't expect investigative journalism deep inside the country. "Pyongyang" is more the story of a failure to really enter North Korea.
Don't expect tales of hunger and misery. "Pyongyang" is more the story of a slice of melon and isolation.
That should be boring stuff : one slight change at a time, no creativity involved (absurd acts of subversion set aside)... but it's not. Image by image, Guy Delisle traps the reader into a Kafkaesque / Orwellian routine. And unlike Dino Buzzati's "The Tartar Steppe / The Desert of the Tartars
", or "The Great Walls of Samaris
" (Stories of the fantastic - by Schuiten and Peeters)*, that's not fiction : only a simple and honest testimony.Seoul Village 2009
* Buzzati for the rhythm and suspended time, Schuiten-Peeters for the architectural, theatrical, and somehow absurd journey.
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