The Silence of Malka

A sweeping and poignant story of Ashkenazi Jews fleeing the Russian pogroms at the end of the 19th Century, as well as a parable of the making of a modern society and the extent to which religion and mysticism meet. Inspired by a story told to the author by his grandmother.

For the family of the little red-headed Malka, trading the Russian shtetl for the Argentine pampas isn't so easy. Even in a country eager to populate its vast territories, the immigrants discover that their new home isn't the promised land. They encounter hostility from both man and nature, as they struggle through droughts and locusts in an attempt to cultivate the arid soil. When misery pushes them to the extreme, Malka's uncle is visited by the prophet Elias, who advises that he create a Golem--the mythical creature fashioned from earth and endowed with life by engraving on his body the word Emet ("Truth")--to pose as a man and aid the immigrants.

When years later the adult Malka is visited by Elias, the events of her youth force her to decide whether or not she can maintain her silence--with fate and divine justice hanging in the balance.

Winner of the Best Foreign Graphic Album award at the Angoulême Festival.

Jorge Zentner was born in Basavilbaso, Argentina in 1953, studied journalism and psychology, and was a newspaper and radio reporter before leaving Argentina in 1977 and settling in Europe. He has published novels, short stories, articles, and poems, but it's for his comics that he's best known, particularly those in collaboration with Rubén Pellejero. Their Adventures of Dieter Lumpen was published in English by IDW's EuroComics in 2016.

Rubén Pellejero was born in Badalona, Spain in 1952. He began his career in 1970 as an illustrator before turning to comics in 1983 with the historical series "Stories of Barcelona." In addition to his extensive collaboration with Jorge Zentner, he has worked with writers Denis LaPiere and Frank Giroud, among others. In 2010 he was awarded the Grand Prize at the Barcelona Comic Fair. One of Europe's most admired comics artists, he was chosen in 2015 for the plum job to illustrate the ongoing adventures of Hugo Pratt's Corto Maltese.