A new illustrated book compares Beirut and New York

The Lebanese visual artist Maya Zankoul, known for her sarcastic comics,

has announced the signing of her upcoming book “Beirut-New York”, containing a series of illustrations that takes readers on a journey of unlikely similarities between two incompatible cities.

The book signing will take place at Sursock Museum, on Thursday, October 20 from 6 PM - 8 PM.

The Lebanese author, blogger, and visual artist is mostly known for her sarcastic cartoons and comics published in her books and her popular webcomic blog, Amalgam, that was founded in 2009. Maya shares on her blog comics and illustrations commenting on daily life in Lebanon from a socio-political point of view. The blog was published into 2 books that were released in 2009 and 2010. Both were top sellers in Lebanon and were translated to Italian.

Lately, and after a visit to New York, Maya tried to answer the question: “What makes New York an world city?”

While trying to answer this question, she found herself comparing New York to Beirut, and found a lot of similarities between these two opposing cities.

Maya selected 40 comparisons and decided to illustrate them and turn them into a book that shows that after all, these two cities are somehow similar in the core!

Few examples are the comparison between the iconic New York Taxi and the famous Lebanese “service”, the comparison between Chinatown in New York and Burj Hammoud in Lebanon, because both are small cities started by immigrants inside a bigger city, and the comparison between the delicious cheesecake and the mouthwatering knefe, just to name a few.

This book is somewhat different from Maya’s previous work because, at first, only one page features the popular character that Maya always features in her illustration, and because the book is not focusing exclusively on Lebanon. When asking her how she feels about her new book, Maya said: “This is my favorite book of all three published books!”

Everyone is invited to meet Maya at Sursock Museum, Ashrafieh, for the the book signing next Thursday, October 20 from 6 PM - 8 PM.