Klezmer: Collector's Edition #1

Joann Sfar's Klezmer: Book One — Tales of the Wild East arrives in a handsome collector's edition from First Second, its loose, expressive cover art immediately setting the tone: a fiddler soaring through the air on a swooping creature, while below, a red-haired banjo player and a rough-looking fellow with a bottle trade company in what feels like a raucous, wandering musical world. Sfar's watercolor-and-ink style crackles with energy and warmth, promising a story steeped in Eastern European Jewish musical tradition filtered through his wonderfully eccentric sensibility. At $25.00, this 2006 edition is a beautifully presented invitation into a folk-tinged adventure where music and life on the road seem gloriously intertwined.