The Divine

by Asaf Hanuka (Illustrator), Tomer Hanuka (Illustrator), Boaz Lavie

Overview

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Mark's out of the military, these days, with his boring, safe civilian job doing explosives consulting. But you never really get away from war. So it feels inevitable when his old army buddy Jason comes calling, with a lucrative military contract for a mining job in an obscure South-East Asian country called Quanlom. They'll have to operate under the radar—Quanlom is being torn apart by civil war, and the US military isn't strictly supposed to be there.

With no career prospects and a baby on the way, Mark finds himself making the worst mistake of his life and signing on with Jason. What awaits him in Quanlom is going to change everything.
What awaits him in Quanlom is weirdness of the highest order: a civil war led by ten-year-old twins wielding something that looks a lot like magic, leading an army of warriors who look a lot like gods.
What awaits him in Quanlom is an actual goddamn dragon.

From world-renowned artists Asaf and Tomer Hanuka (twins, whose magic powers are strictly confined to pen and paper) and Boaz Lavie, The Divine is a fast-paced, brutal, and breathlessly beautiful portrait of a world where ancient powers vie with modern warfare and nobody escapes unscathed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781596436749
Publisher:	First Second
Publication date:	07/14/2015
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	4.06(w) x 8.44(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Boaz Lavie is a writer, filmmaker, and game designer residing in Tel Aviv. He has written screenplays for popular Israeli TV shows, including for the Israeli leading broadcast TV channel. He was the film section editor for a major Israeli website, and has published stories in several literary magazines. "The Lake", a short film he has written and directed, was featured in Academy Award qualifying events such as The San Francisco International Film Festival, Slamdance, Palm Springs Film Festival, and others. It has won critical acclaim and was selected by the film magazine SF360 as one of the best five undiscovered films for 2010.

Asaf Hanuka is a comics artist whose books have been published in The U.S, France, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Israel and Korea. With his twin brother Tomer he created "Bipolar" comics (2000-2005) which garnered nominations for both the Ignatz and Eisner Awards. Asaf was also nominated for Eisner award for his book "Pizzeria Kamikaze" with writer Etgar Keret (2006). His recent book, "The Realist" (2012), is an autobiographical comics about his life in Tel Aviv, has won a Gold Medal from The Society of Illustrators, and was translated into many languages. Asaf has contributed to the art of Oscar-nominated doco-animation film "Waltz with Bashir."

Tomer Hanuka is an illustrator whose work has been featured on book covers, in magazines and in film. He has won multiple gold medals from the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Publication Designers and his work has been showcased in Print magazine and American Illustration. He also contributed art to the Oscar nominated "Waltz with Bashir." With his twin brother Asaf, Tomer created "Bipolar" comics (2000-2005) which garnered nominations for both the Ignatz and Eisner Awards. A collection of his illustrations, titled "Overkill,"was published in 2012. In 2014 he illustrated the Valentine's Day themed cover of The New Yorker magazine.

Their most recent work is the graphic novel The Divine.

Editorial Reviews

This graphic novel…is a too rare example of artists getting top billing…Asaf and Tomer Hanuka, balance hair-thin contours with flat, solid swaths of color. Their sensitivity to shade and form makes even the story's quotidian images worth lingering over…

The New York Times Book Review - Douglas Wolk

05/11/2015
Heady, hellacious, and phantasmagoric, Israeli filmmaker Lavie’s (The Lake) debut graphic novel—illustrated by veteran artists the Hanuka twins (Bi-Polar, The Realist)—feels like something Alex Garland would have come up with after bingeing on Apocalypse Now outtakes. Mark is an explosives expert whose economic anxieties are ratcheted up by his wife’s pregnancy. When near-psychotic old pal Jason promises a weird gig for great pay—all they have to do is go down to the Southeast Asian nation of Quanlom and rig an entire mountain for controlled demolition—Mark jumps. Once in Quanlom the mood pivots from merely ominous to outright wartime nightmare, as Mark is taken prisoner by some particularly vicious preadolescent rebels. The story gets more and more violent and fantasy-like from there. The Hanukas’ layered illustrations coat everything with a hyperreal glaze, accentuating the story’s dreamlike aspects. The only off-key note comes at the very end, when a source of tragic real-life inspiration casts this otherwise gripping book in somewhat of a sour light. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Stunning artwork and creeping dread weave together in this satisfying and moving page-turner.

starred review Booklist

Arresting images, a supernatural tale rooted in a real story, and cool gore -- The Divine has got it all.

Yann Martel

In an obscure, southeastern country, nothing is as it seems or expected. Children go to war and innocence is the curse of trespassing white men, soldiers from the United States who think they can make a quick profit on the back of the country’s civil war. The story is a blend of the mystical and mythologized fact. In the 1990s, twelve-year-old twins, Johnny and Luther Htoo, led a group of refugees from east Burma, called “God’s Army,” in a fight against the Burmese army for dispossessing them from their lands. Legends grew up around the twins, referred to as “The Divine,” giving them powers of invulnerability and the ability to do magic. Lavie grew this seed of a story into a tale of corruption, revenge and, ultimately, redemption. The Hanukas’ illustrations are well done, making good use of different points of view, unusual perspectives (distance, close-up and middle distance, as well as views from below and above the horizon line) and variations in color and tone; all are combined with an elegant use of line to create visuals that support and enlarge the narrative. There is sufficient detail to make the characters consistently recognizable; and the judicious use of color, along with muted grays, black, and white reinforce the main action in each panel so that the flow of the story goes forward without confusion. These images are as powerful as the story line, coating a blend that strengthens the whole. This book would be a good resource in the study of graphic novel styles and how images can be developed to support or enhance a narrative, as well as in a study unit on how reported facts can mutate into stories that are larger than life. Reviewer: Hazel Buys; Ages 14 up.

Children's Literature - Hazel Buys