Hostage by Guy Delisle

It was in the early morning hours of July 2 that I was kidnapped. I had been working for three months in the town of Nazran, in Ingushetia, a small Russian republic west of Chechnya. I was responsible for the  finances and administration of a medical N60 established in the North Caucasus. It was my first job in the humanitarian sector.

So begins the story of Christian Andre, a French humanitarian worker whisked away in the middle of the night by Chechen rebels, taken to an unknown location and chained to a radiator. Initially he assumes he’s been kidnapped because he’s the organization’s treasurer, the only person with a key to the safe in his house; as the days, weeks, and months go by, it becomes clear that they don’t know about the safe at all--he’s been held for ransom. As told to graphic journalist Guy Delisle, Hostage recounts his experience.

Graphic novels provide unique presentational opportunities. Anything goes and a cartoonist with some time can draw a story as large-scale as any blockbuster, be it a superhero apocalypse, a sprawling period piece, cosmic horror, whatever. But the elevator pitch for Hostage sounds like a poor fit. Most of it takes place in one room, with one character. There’s very little dialogue, since Christian can’t understand or communicate with his captors. Many of the panels recur over and over, as Christian studies his feet, tries to escape the handcuffs, sleeps in uncomfortable positions, counts the days, speculates on when and if he’ll be released. He’s moved to a few different locations, but none of them are much more visually complex. Aside from the ten or so pages where he entertains himself by replaying military history in his head, Hostage is a long, repetitious nightmare.

Thankfully, it all works perfectly. Comics excel at working with time, able to stretch a single second over pages and pages or elide years in the gutter between panels. They can also, crucially, communicate repetition with drawings instead of prose, which means that the reader who tires of being imprisoned with Christian can speed quickly through the book, but for me, I found the repetitive rhythms of the days drew me in, affecting a real sense of melancholy or hopelessness where a prose presentation might instead have brought boredom and irritation.

In the last 40 pages or so, the story picks up as Christian manages to escape(!) when his captors forget to lock his door when they leave. With the help of a family he reluctantly trusts, he eventually makes it back, safe and sound. And according to the afterword, he returned to continue his humanitarian work a year later. Hostage is an affecting work, a masterful use of the form, and I’m going to be seeking out more of Delisle’s work.