Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave

by Yann Damezin

Overview

It is a story known around the world. Born of an Arabic tale and interpreted hundreds of times in a dozen languages, its influence is felt in story, song, popular culture, even language. The tragic tale of love unfulfilled - Majnun and Layla. Qais and Layla were madly in love. So in love, it has been said, that the young man could not contain his passion for his beloved, such that he was given the nickname “Majnun” — The Madman. But their love could not be, as they were separated by fate and man, leading to a tragic end for these star-crossed souls. Experience the classic Persian poem as painted in the lush palette of artist Yann Damezin. Through his brush, we see a decadent and sensorial world, one as raw and vulnerable as the love between the Majnun and his Layla.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643379609
Publisher:	Humanoids, Inc.
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	HUMANOIDS INC - EBKS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	184
File size:	86 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Born in 1991, Yann Damezin is passionate about literature and classical music. After his baccalaureate, he joined the prestigious Émile Cohl school in Lyon in order to realize his dream: to become an illustrator. Graphically, his influences are rich and diverse including Persian iconography, Italian primitives, expressionism. These varied influences infuse his visual universe with a very special dimension, tinged with fantasy. He has released several graphic novels in France to great acclaim, including Majnun et Leili, which won the prestigious Prix Orange de la BD, an award granted to promising newcomers to the comics (bande dessinee) scene.

Thomas Harrison, Ph.D., is the Vice Chair of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of European Languages & Transcultural Studies at UCLA, where he teaches literature, translation, aesthetic theory, and Italian film. His most recent book is Of Bridges: A Poetic and Philosophical Account. He is also the author of 1910: The Emancipation of Dissonance, a study of European expressionism across the arts, and of Essayism: Conrad, Musil and Pirandello.

Aqsa Ijaz works on classical Persian poetry and studies its reception in mediaeval and early modern North India. Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan – she is trained in classical music and specialises in the vocal forms of thumri and ghazal. As a scholar of Persian, Urdu, and Punjabi, her doctoral research focuses on the reception of the 12th century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi and examines the formative role of Nizami’s poetry in shaping the language of emotion in premodern North India. Besides her academic work, Aqsa is an essayist and a translator and writes for various international publications such as The World Literature Today, The Herald, and the Marginalia Review of Books. She is committed to sharing academic research with audiences across the globe and in this regard serves on the editorial board of The Marginalia Review of Books in Los Angeles. Currently, she teaches Urdu and Persian at the Department of Language Studies, and co-manages the The Global Past Research Initiative also at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Editorial Reviews

★ 12/04/2023

Through a vibrant visual tapestry, French cartoonist and Angouleme’s Prix Orange debut comics winner Damezin reimagines a centuries-old Persian love poem. Since childhood, Qays has adored Layla, a woman with a “face like the moon” and “teeth of sugar... tall as a cypress.” His love turns to obsession, however, and his endless songs exalting her praises soon earn him the nickname “Majnun,” or “the madman.” Layla’s father forbids her from being with him (“this fool who tosses to the wind the name of my child”) and forces her to marry another, causing Majnun to die of grief. In the graphic novel’s latter half, Damezin transforms the classic lovers-torn-asunder tale into something far more feminist, giving Layla agency as the men around her work to imprison her body and soul. After Majnun demands from his grave that she die so they can be together in eternity, Layla scolds his skeleton for selfishness and walks away into freedom. In a series of bold, elaborately blossoming panels, Layla acknowledges her power, speaking directly to her dead beloved: “You died as a drop. I will be the waves.” Combining elemental, natural, and human images amid a mosaic of bright colors, Damezin charts a new course for Layla that pushes the ancient poem into altogether modern territory. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

...a brilliantly accomplished exercise in style,
a hymn to tender, beautiful, subtle and luminous love.

ActuaLitté - Jean-Charles Andrieu de Levis (translated)

...an undeniable success, both graphically and literary: all the pages of [Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave] seduce by their graphic inventiveness.

Jeune Afrique - Nicholas Michael (translated)

With [Majnun and Layla: Songs from Beyond the Grave], whose very rich graphic work competes with a text of rare quality, Damezin offers an opus as surprising as it is exceptional in the field of contemporary comics.

Middle East Eye edition francaise - Lea Polverini (translated)

Yann Damezin gives beautiful colors to this poetic story but above all gives it a modernity, already approached by the poet Nezâmi (12th century), by giving the female character as much space as the male!

L'essentiART - Benoit Gaboriaud (translated)

★ 12/02/2023

Damezin offers readers an entrancing visual journey as he retells a classic Persian poem in this gorgeous graphic novel. Qays and Layla are young lovers, but their relationship is strongly opposed by Layla's father, who deems Qays too mercurial to marry his daughter. Qays quickly proves him right, becoming Majnun, lingering just beyond the bounds of Layla's town as she mourns him and dutifully marries a man of her father's choosing. Majnun's mystical mourning echoes through the desert, enticing animals to follow him, haunting all who hear it, and even enrapturing insects who consume his broken-hearted body after his death. Damezin's visual language relies confidently on complex color; dark backgrounds and rich shades of orange, green and purple are overlaid with enhanced, artistically formalized textures of the natural world—flames, waves, and fecund plant life. Damezin's most modern storytelling choice is especially compelling; Layla finds a strong voice in the tale's final act, in which she boldly skewers the narrative expectations put upon the woman within a tragic love story and asserts that there is as much power in her silence as in Majnun's ceaseless soliloquies. VERDICT For lovers of storytelling and lovers writ large, this is a masterful, unforgettable introduction to an essential romantic text.

Library Journal