A short life of the author
Rutu Modan (born 1966) is an Israeli cartoonist whose graphic novels are among the finest produced anywhere in the world — works that use a clean, ligne claire drawing style and poker-faced narrative tone to tell stories about Israeli life that are simultaneously thrillers, comedies, and meditations on family, loss, and the absurdity of living in a place where political violence is a daily background.
Life and Career
Modan studied at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem and co-founded the Israeli comics anthology Actus Tragicus in the 1990s. She has worked as an illustrator for Israeli newspapers and teaches comics at Bezalel.
Exit Wounds (2007) was her first graphic novel — the story of a young man who receives a call from a woman who believes his estranged father was killed in a suicide bombing. The search for the father’s identity — alive or dead — became a vehicle for exploring the emotional detachment and avoidance that characterize Israeli family life under the constant threat of violence. The book won an Eisner Award and established Modan as a major figure in international comics.
The Property (2013) followed a young Israeli woman who accompanies her grandmother to Warsaw to reclaim family property confiscated during the Holocaust. The trip unearths family secrets and forces confrontations between generations with very different relationships to the past. The book’s clear-line art — influenced by Hergé and Jacques Tardi — gave the story a deceptive simplicity that masked emotional complexity.
Tunnels (2021) was her most ambitious work — a thriller-comedy about an Israeli archaeologist who discovers a tunnel leading to a potentially world-changing artifact beneath the West Bank. The novel used the archaeology of the Holy Land as a metaphor for the competing narratives — Israeli, Palestinian, religious, secular — that layer the same ground.
Key Works
- Exit Wounds (2007)
- The Property (2013)
- Tunnels (2021)
Collecting Modan
First editions (Drawn & Quarterly) bring $20–$40. Exit Wounds is the most collected. Hebrew editions (Moby Dick Publishing) have separate collector interest. Modan’s art occasionally appears at gallery exhibitions, and original pages are sought-after.