Fried Polenta Scones

This is an extraordinary graphic novel recounting the true story of one young Argentine soldier's experience of war. Its visceral depiction of terrifying events is presented in dramatic monochrome, stripped of distracting detail, giving emphasis to facial expression, staccato dialogue and sonorous sound, together with a refusal to excuse or sugar-coat the extremes of warfare or of the behaviour of those caught up in the turmoil.

The reader is spared no disturbing detail, be it bodily functions, desires, fear, the young conscripts' hatred of the enemy and sometimes even their own officers. The stark graphics delineate a bleak treeless land with stony terrain and forbidding mountains, while in the shortening days of a petrifying winter the dialogue and action transmit the intensifying horror of armed conflict.

"In twenty years of reading the testimonies, from both sides, of the harrowing experiences of survivors of the 1982 war, rarely have I encountered a text more directly capturing the irresponsibility, the futility, of exposing ill-equipped young conscripts to peril, trauma and the unrelenting imminence of violent death as depicted in Fried Polenta Scones." Bernard McGuirk, author of Falklands-Malvinas: An Unfinished Business