I picked up at the library Papaya Salad, by Thai-Italian artist Elisa Macellari – a beautiful graphic novel about her great-uncle’s life during WWII – growing up in rural Thailand, joining the military diplomatic corps in order to see the world, ending up at the Thai embassy in Italy, then Berlin, and being taken as a POW by American forces (as Thailand had sided with Japan in WWII), meeting his wife and his eventual return to Thailand. It’s beautifully drawn, and shot through with love and longing and the confusion of an individual drawn along by larger forces.