TITLE: Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95
AUTHOR: Joe Sacco
STARTED: April 9, 2011
FINISHED: April 10, 2011
PAGES: 240
GENRE: Graphic Novel
FIRST SENTENCE: [From the Introduction] In Sarajevo in the summer of 1992, when the journalistic community (who had already annexed the British phrase "the hacks" as their collective noun) met in the bar of the disfigured Holiday Inn - and that phrase itself suggest the surreal nature of things, with a Holiday Inn being disfigured rather than disfiguring - there were all sorts of competitive anecdotes about near-misses, random encounters, and different styles of flak-jacket.
SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com
] The winner of the 2001 Eisner Award for Best New Graphic Album. Sacco spent five months in Bosnia in 1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories that are rarely found in conventional news coverage, emerging with this astonishing first-person account. Praised by The New York Times, Brill's Content and Publishers Weekly, Safe Area Gorazde is the long-awaited and highly sought after 240-page look at war in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco (the critically-acclaimed author of Palestine) spent five months in Bosnia in 1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories that are rarely found in conventional news coverage. The book focuses on the Muslim-held enclave of Gorazde, which was besieged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. Sacco lived for a month in Gorazde, entering before the Muslims trapped inside had access to the outside world, electricity or running water. Safe Area Gorazde is Sacco's magnum opus and with it he is poised too become one of America's most noted journalists. THOUGHTS: It took me tome time to get accustomed to the art style of this graphic novel. When I get distracted by the art, I do not fall into the story as easily. Once I got over the whole exaggerated features thing, I was able to enjoy this book. The story is simple and straightforward but still packs a wallop of emotion. The graphic novel is set up so that you read vignettes of the author's time in Gorazde. This kept the story moving, but it was not always easy to remember who was who and who did what when. That did not detract from my overall enjoyment of the book.
Safe Area Gorazde has been in my TBR list for sometime. I'm glad I put it in my read-a-thon stack. It was not the best graphic novel I've read, but it was interesting and informative.
RATING: 5/10 [Good]
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