Safe Area Goražde
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| Author | Joe Sacco |
|---|---|
| Illustrator | Joe Sacco |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Bosnian War |
| Genre | Comics, New journalism |
| Publisher | Fantagraphics |
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Publication date
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2000, 2011 (Special Edition) |
| Media type | Print, Paperback |
| Pages | 227 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 44765236 |
Safe Area Goražde is a journalistic comic book about the Bosnian War, written by Joe Sacco. It was published in 2000.
The book describes the author's experiences during four months spent in Bosnia in 1994–95, and is based on conversations with Bosniaks trapped within the enclave of Goražde.
Sacco 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.
Joe Sacco visits Gorazde, a mainly Bosniak enclave in eastern Bosnia surrounded by hostile Serb-dominated regions. Sacco visits the locals and gets a first-hand view of the war's brutal effect on the town.
The story of Gorazde develops through the narrations of Edin, a graduate student who was studying engineering in Sarajevo before the war, and other residents of Gorazde.
Yugoslavia had been a multi-ethnic country and its cultural pluralism was proudly propagandized throughout the world. Edin and many others recall having fun with their Serb and Croat friends during the Josip Broz Tito era. However, after the death of the charismatic former Partisan leader, the newly elected president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević begins to incite extreme Serb nationalism among the Serb population. By bringing back the painful memories before the Tito era in which bloody conflicts raged between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, he succeeds in inciting chauvinistic sentiment among the Serbs. The republics of Slovenia and Croatia, intimidated by the development of the situation, declare independence from Yugoslavia.
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