Book Description: A landmark work of New Journalism is now available in softcover.
Safe Area Gorazde is Joe Sacco's 240-page opus about the war in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco spent four months in Bosnia in 1995-1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories rarely found in conventional news coverage. The book focuses on the Muslim enclave of Gorazde, which was besieged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. Sacco spent four weeks in Gorazde, entering before the Muslims trapped inside had access to the outside world, electricity or running water.
The hardcover edition of Safe Area Gorazde put Sacco on the map as one of the pre-eminent journalists of his time, and the softcover edition will present his work to a wider audience. The book has been prominently featured in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Utne Reader, Spin, The London Times, The Washington Post, Brill's Content, several NPR programs, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly, and other media. The book also led to Sacco being named a recipient of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. Safe Area Gorazde features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens, political columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair.
Most insightful book on everyday life during the Bosnian War yet I teach Central European political geography at the University of Minnesota. I just read this book, and I have to say that it better evokes the true state of chaos and genocide that was occurring in Bosnia than almost any other book on the subject. It is basically a reporter's diary... filled with eyewitness accounts of unbelievable atrocities and hatred. The key thing that this adds, and that other accounts lack, are the images. The fact that it is a cartoon does not dumb down the atrocities but adds an element of suspense and terror that written narratives like Peter Maass's "Love Thy Neighbor" largely lack, i.e., you can see the family dodging bullets and jumping in the river. Also, unlike a lot of war journalism, Joe Sacco doesn't dwell on himself and other reporters much at all -- it is focused on the people that survived genocide. With Karadzic's arrest this past week, there is no better time to read this book and remember exactly why he will be found guilty of the most heinous crimes in Europe since Stalin was in power.
Grim and terribly depressing, but important and well told First, the bad news: "Safe Area Goradze" is bleak, depressing and unrelentingly sad. It is the true tale of the horrible suffering of the Muslim population of the ever-so-ironically designated "Safe Area" of Goradze, a city in the former country of Yugoslavia during that nation's recent civil war and breakup. The combination of the author's drawings and prose work together to tell the gruesome story of a real life hell on Earth in brutal, unflinching, unblinking detail. It's the graphic novel equivalent of "Schindler's List". If you buy this book, steel yourself. It's not an easy read.
Nevertheless, I think Joe Sacco is a genius who is to be commended for telling a story that cries out to be told. I'm sure his editors warned him that this story was not one that would be a big seller. The arcane politics of the former Yugoslavia, which Sacco does a masterful job of explaining, don't interest many people. And the subject matter is depressing and gruesome in the extreme. Nevertheless, he wrote and illustrated the graphic novel, and Fantagraphics Books is to be applauded for publishing it. Hopefully, this work will serve as the historical record of the awful torments inflicted upon human beings in a particular time and place, leaving wounds physical and psychic that will take generations to heal.
Great read, very unique look at life in a war zone Having been to Bosnia after the war, its really nice to see this perspective and form of journalism. Joe Sacco's work in this book is brilliant, and this is by far his best work. The feel of life in the country, and the anxiety of life in this period is really well represented. I love the personal face that comes alive here with Joe's various stories from the friends that he has made along his journey.
Insightful reporting from a different perspective Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995 (Fantagraphics, 2002)
Joe Sacco's spent some time in Gorazde after things calmed down a bit over there-- got to know the people, talked to them a lot, blended in with the scenery. He drew them, related their words, drew the things they saw and experienced day to day. Safe Area Gorazde is the result.
If you're used to either the current spate of war memoirs or the current spate of graphic novels, Safe Area Gorazde will likely seem familiar, yet still somewhat out of place. It is a book that resides comfortably in neither category, but I can't quite call it a successful cross of the two; it's too narrative for graphic noveldom, while being too impressionist to really classify as a war memoir. This is not to say that the book is bad by any means; there is a great deal to be absorbed here, and given the short shrift received by the plight of Gorazde as it was happening in the American press, far more Americans should be absorbing it than already have. Sacco has a gentle, self-deprecating humor, and the kind of ear that turns even the most unpleasant interviewee into a sympathetic character. As well, while most of Sacco's drawings are straightforward-- there are an almost unsettling number of scenes in this book featuring a single character against a monochrome background, as if being interviewed on a talk show (or up against a wall being faced by a firing squad)-- every once in a while one pops out that makes you realize that, yes, there's a war going on in Gorazde as Sacco is conducting these interviews. The scarcity of the out-and-out brutal pictures makes them all the more effective in Sacco's pastiche of desperation, loss, and ever-present gallows humor.
Good stuff, this. ***
The genocide of Muslims by Christians in the 1990s I just finished reading this brilliant work. I was in Eastern Europe in 1991-1993 and saw the refugees coming out of Bosnia. I followed the story as close as I could, even visting a refugee camp. But Sacco's illustrations put me on the ground in the supposed safe zones. The brutality of the supposedly Christian Serbs to Muslim Bosnians is so overwheliming it makes any beheadings in Iraq look like a birthday party in comparison.
The book also does a nice job giving the history of the war, including the role Clinton played, for those who don't remember the 1990s. Please rread this book. You can do it in a day.
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