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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast. I'm Sam Leith, the literary edge of the spectator,

and I'm joined this week by Joe Sacco, cartoonist whose work includes footnotes, Gaza, Palestine, paying the land,

and Safe Area Garasde. His new book is The Once and Future Riot, which tells the story of a riot that took place between Muslims and Hindus in Western Uttar Pradesh in India.

Joe, welcome.

Thank you.

Now, a lot of your work has been, as it were, straightforward reportage.

And this is reportage again, but it's, you know, the riot was

long over by the time you got there. What was it that put you onto this story and made you think

there was something there for you? You're right. I got there about a year after the riot. I was

interested in what people would say had happened during

the riot. In other words, what narrative they had constructed sometime after the riot about what they did.

It was mainly the idea was to talk to people, see what story they had about the riot, and then put that up against

what I could ascertain to be the facts.

What was it that kind of drew you to this particular story?

I mean, what, you know, did you read about it in the papers?

Did you have contacts?

He said, there's something here.

Or how'd you been interested in intercommental violence in India for a while?

...