Safe Area Gorazde

What’s up slackers? I can only assume that the dearth of posts lately is due to everyone last minute shopping and then curling up in the evenings with their books and mulled wine. I haven’t been getting much reading done lately myself due to holiday mania and work travel. Luckily, I have a backlog of books that I still need to tell you guys about that will take up some of the slack. Next up is Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Bosnia 1992-1995 by Joe Sacco.

Remember that war? Remember how Republicans in Congress provided succor to our troops by rallying behind President Clinton during a time of war, providing him with their unwavering support? Me either. Luckily, this book isn’t about us. It is on the ground reporting of the impacts of war on real people in an UN-designated “safe area” during the war in Bosnia. Oh, and it is told in comic form. Read on below the fold.

I was not a big comics fan growing up, and I really had not read much of the adult-oriented graphic novels until this year. I read art Spiegelman’s Maus when it came out, and I think that it is something that everyone should read. After Maus, though, I quickly reverted to text-only snobbery. The attention that comix started to get over the last few years with Persepolis, the new Spiegelman, the McSweeney’s collection, and other titles, got me to have a second look. I am sold for the most part. I am convinced that there are some stories that are best told in this way.

Sacco’s war stories, I think, would have suffered if relayed in typical journalism or war-memoire styles. Any explanation of the players in the Bosnian war would require you to draw your own figure on a napkin outlining the ethnic and national groups and their relationship with one another just to keep them straight. Then there are the geographic regions and their alliances to keep straight. You’d need a chalkboard to keep going back to. Having Sacco’s images to go along with the text is so much more visceral and immediate than a column from the front lines. In relaying the horrors of war, it is also much more direct and honest. The author does not allow you to conjure a rose-colored sepia-toned romantic image of Gorazde, he supplies you the reality as he saw it on the ground.

Going into this book, I really had no idea what the whole Bosnian war was about. This book provided a basic back story of the break up of Yugoslovia, although it is principally about the war as it happened in a specific place. For more information, a big picture history would be the way to go. Sacco provides a “suggested reading” list at the end of the book. I enjoyed the book and felt better informed as a result of having read it.

Sacco is a war correspondent who has a few other books on the Bosnian war and a book about the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. I will be checking some of those out in the new year.

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  By Dr J, December 22, 2005 @ 1:41 pm

  On this note, if you can ever pull yourself away from the kiddie pages, I strongly recommend Chris Hedges’s War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.

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  By DJ Cayenne, December 24, 2005 @ 3:36 pm

  Thanks for the recommendation. I’ll look into it. When I’m done with the funny pages.

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