Bekele

by Mattias Elftorp, Raquel Lozano, Emre Özdamarlar (Illustrator)

Bekele is married to Johannes in Malmö, Sweden. They have to go to regular interviews at the Migration Board to prove that their marriage is real.

But what will they do when their lives are suddenly turned upside down? When something happens that puts more on the line than just their relationship?

This is the story of Bekele, Johannes and Simon, but also about the Sweden of today...
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Bekele was published under the Tusen Serier imprint.

Genres: Comics

64 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2013

About the author

Has written and drawn the cyberpunk postapocalypse of Piracy is Liberation since 2001 (first collection published in 2004). Also other graphic novels like The Troll, Me & my Daddy & Zlatan, Bekele, En Andra Chans, After the Ends of the World, Transgressions, etc. Creator of the furiously political comic Arg Kanin (Angry Animals) and many short stories in various anthologies such as CBA, Novo Doba, Futuro Primitivo, Alkom’X, Workburger, Komikaze, Swedish Comic Sin, Asylkalendern and the AltCom anthology.

Active in various comics/art-related collectives/organizations:

WORMGOD
Comics/horror art collective: publishing comics, organizing art exhibitions, noise events.

CBK
Publisher of the international comics anthology CBA. Art comics, experimental comics, visually interesting narratives etc.

TUSEN SERIER
Working to open up the Swedish comics culture to readers & creators with other perspectives than the "Swedish" one. Antiracism, comics, exhibitions, workshops. Also running FANZINEVERKSTADEN, a place with resources for self-publishing comic creators in Malmö.

HYBRIDEN
Collective/network and webshop for the above.

ALTCOM
Organizer of the AltCom comics festival (2010: sex & war, 2012: no borders, 2014: postapokalyps, 2016: work, 2018: how to survive a dictatorship) and one of the organizers of Wormgod’s Trauma music festival (harsh noise, power electronics and other things to hurt your ears). Both held in Malmö, Sweden.

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I'm reviewing my own books sometimes to provide some trivia and/or personal reflections on them.

Reviews

[Fredrik Strömberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ok, time for yet another full disclosure. I know two out of three artists involved in this book very well, and the book was even published within a project run by the Swedish Comics Association, of which I am the President. That said, I had actually not read this book until it was finished and had nothing to do with its creation.

Bekele is the story of a young immigrant woman in Sweden, trying to get by, make a living and not be deported. We follow her, her Swedish boyfriend, his closest male friend and the immigration officer investigating Bekele's case. The story is part social realism, part soap-opera and part political statement about how we treat immigrants in Sweden. But it's also a story written by a person (Raquel Lozano) who shares much of the background with the main character. It's never stated that Bekele is autobiographical, but part of it is clearly based on real life events. This dichotomy between didactic, political intentions and a story evidently based on personal experience is what makes Bekele interesting.

Reading this just days after reading Oskar Ekman's and Peter Bergting's Vi ses igen, Sanam, makes me realize just how closely related these two books are even though there were no connections between them during production as far as I am aware. It's the zeitgeist I guess. Combing the two, reading Sanam first and then Bekeke gives a good introduction to the life of a refugee/immigrant in Sweden.

Oh, and the artist Emre Özdamarlar has outdone himself with this book, producing art that surpasses everything he's done before. Simple and elegant, it tells the story without ever stealing the show.