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.

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.

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. ***

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. ***

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. ***

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.

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.

A graphic novel that reveals the history of the Bosnian war and cleansing of Muslims and Crotians by the Serbs.Novel is by Joe Sacco a Journalist and cartoonist. He also has writtin other graphic novels.

A graphic novel that reveals the history of the Bosnian war and cleansing of Muslims and Crotians by the Serbs.Novel is by Joe Sacco a Journalist and cartoonist. He also has writtin other graphic novels.

Safe Area Gorazde shows on a personal level what people went through during the oftentimes savage Serbian war on Bosnia in the early nineties. In typical thug fashion, the Serbians managed to violate every aspect of diplomacy as they quite literally butchered and stole their way through the eastern regions of Bosnia. Joe Sacco does a good job capturing the tragedy and the emotion of the situation, though I must admit that I found his art to be very distracting. For what it is, however, the art is internally consistent and well done.

Comparisons to Joe Kubert's "Fax from Sarajevo" are inevitable. As journalism, "Safe Area Gorazde" is a much superior work, though as a comic book, "Fax from Sarajevo" is far, far better. But then, Kubert is a grandmaster of the craft, after all, just as Sacco is more directly experienced with graphic-format documentaries.

Fortunately, you don't have to choose between the two. You can (and should) read them both!

A tremendous achievement. As he did with the Pulitzer-award deserving "Palestine," Sacco again journeys into a people's culture and history with an unerring eye and ear. This time he focusses on Bosnia in the mid-1990s and he relates the horrific genocidal actions against the Muslim Bosnians in the enclave of Gorazde beautifully. This is a gem of a book that demonstrates that graphic novels (and documentaries) can pack as powerful an emotional punch as any piece hanging in a museum or exhibited in a thetaer. Bravo!

sorry but this book just seems like standard 'horror story' style war reporting.

page after page story after story of bodies being hacked to pieces, murder, slaughter, rape, murder, slaughter, decapitation, dead kids, dead pregnant women, etc etc etc.

if it were not for the relationships he has with the people there, and his personality perspective on things like the 'blue highway' UN supply line, this book would just be a bunch of
war porn.

what do i expect? he spent a long time watching his friends get
shot at and injured. he was in a town of civilians being slaughtered by an opposing army, where neighbors were killing each other for...for what?

in one passage a man says 'i will never understand how these people could do this'.

well, that is the journalists job, to figure out the reasons behind things. when you finish this book, you will have no idea why the war happened. and that is fine, except that you might
as well just watch any generic documentary about the war
and have your fill of mass graves, rotting corpses, sliced throats, dead babies, and so forth, if you feel that it is
really helpful for you to spend hours gawking at that sort
of spectacle, go ahead.

but by the end of this book you might find yourself saying
'those damned serbs, someone oughta kill them all... '

which is the kind of thinking that starts war in the first place.

This work of comics journalism is utterly stunning. Sacco uses the town of Gorazde as a microcosm of the war in Bosnia. Though numerous pages have been written on the horrors of this period of Balkan history, Sacco's drawings and text present a unique intensity and reality. He makes clear that the people who suffered through this are no different than you or I. The interspersed sections of background history are accurate and succinct. I cannot recommend this important work highly enough.

This is a very brave book that takes an unflinching look at the personal affects of the war in Eastern Bosnia in the 1990's. Sacco is not attempting to tell about the battles, victories defeats of this war but rather the affects the war had on the civilians trying to live through it. This novel is important and should not be dismissed or overlooked due to the choice by the author of making this a graphic novel.

If you are looking for a detailed accounting of the war this is not the book for you. Instead this is the book for any reader that wants to learn the personal affects of war upon the civilians trying to live through it. Sacco uses personal interviews with people who lived in Bosnia to give the reader an intimate feeling of how life is like for the people who had to live through the war, rather than being able to see "highlights" on CNN every few days.

The graphic novel form works well for Sacco. Sacco's art work is graphic and raw yet has a beauty to it that the reader should enjoy, even while reeling from some of the war images. The intimacy of the medium, illustrating events versus describing them, hits the reader with a great deal of impact and shows the severity of the environment and events in the novel.

This book is a great example of the possibilities of the graphic novel medium. Hopefully there will be more works from Sacco soon.

War reporter and master artist, Joe Sacco, paints for us some of the devastated lives in war-torn Bosnia. We are here shown the self-perceived "retaliatory" punishments meted out to the Bosnians by the Serbs. As Sacco bears witness to these events, one is reminded of Tolstoy's notion that "every punishment is based not on logic or on the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or another person."

This is a comic book, entirely. There is no text (other than that in the text bubbles), no bibliography, no substantiation of the material presented, no analysis. The historical accuracy of the events presented has nothing to provide verification. If you're looking for a book to provide information regarding the war in Bosnia, this isn't it. If you use comic books as your basis for knowledge and understanding, this is probably a good book. If you can read above a 2nd grade level, this book is below you. Unfortunately, there were but two pages scanned to preview before purchase. Also unfortunately, it appears that the literary world is devoid of quality books regarding the war. If you're desparate for a deeper understanding of the war, this book will be a great disappointment.

While Sacco does provide a few pieces of historical and political detail to establish the context of his stories, this book is not an overall account of the war in Bosnia. As he did in PALESTINE, he combines the oral histories of his interviewees with his own observations on conditions in the enclave as well as his feelings about being in a danger zone. He keeps his primary focus on roughly half a dozen people, which helps to structure the collection of vignettes into something of a narrative, while also including interviews with a number of other people. Sacco stands back and lets the interviewees tell their stories, keeping his editorializing and personal reflections to interludes. You can feel his outrage over the conditions and the circumstances, but he doesn't allow that outrage to boil over and distract from the story. Despite the comments of Christopher Hitchens in his introduction, I think this approach serves Sacco well. It ensures that the reader will not be able to distract himself from the brutality and suffering by getting caught up in critiquing the author's tone.

And there is plenty of brutality and devastation here. Sacco's artwork is detailed and expressive, not gruesome for shock value's sake but unflinching in its depictions of wartime injuries and combat medicine under the worst possible conditions. You can't help but wonder not only how human beings could be so cruel to each other, but how other human beings could stand back and let it happen.

Sacco shows the human side of the Yugoslavian war through a brilliant and effective combination of prose and comic book illustration. Not only does he provide a history and time line of the conflict, but also what it meant to the people who lived through it - and those who didn't. Sacco portrays aspects of the war that the press seemed to miss. Shocking, but a must-read!