Fax From Sarajevo [Paperback]

Joe Kubert (Author)

Book Description

In 1945, we told the world, "Never again". In 1992, the promise was broken into bloody shards. That was the year the war broke out in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the year that genocide revisited the planet. It was the year that Ervin Rustemagic -- an international businessman whose clients included author Joe Kubert -- found himself and his family trapped in a city under siege. When the shells and gunfire tore the city asunder, Ervin's only means of communication to the outside world was via his fax machine -- he sent messages to Joe which could be refaxed to his friends on the outside. As Joe began to receive these messages from Ervin, he did what he had done for years -- what he had become famous for doing -- what he put the story to paper. This full-color graphic non-fiction book is one that anyone can read, that everyone should read. What Maus is to World War II, Fax from Sarajevo will be to the Bosnian War.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Dark Horse; 1 edition (October 14, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569713464
• ISBN-13: 978-1569713464
• Product Dimensions: 10.7 x 8.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #712,951 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Society Unraveled, January 6, 2002

By 

N. Smith (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fax From Sarajevo (Paperback)

I heard about this book when it first came out and I simply had to check it out.

Why would a well-known artist like Joe Kubert abandon the hum-drum of fictional comics to produce a full-length journalistic book...? How could he expect it to even sell?

When the Cranberries wrote a song about Sarajevo, comparing the hatred there to that of Northern Ireland, the topic of Joe's book made me sit up and listen. And I am so glad I did. Joe's connection to the subject matter is personal, and I think that this one fact makes this book a classic work of literature in its own time. Despite his bias because of his closeness to the situation, Joe takes the time to present the complexity of the situation in Bosnia with his art and editorial commentary. And for this I am very thankful.

When I traveled to Croatia in 1997, this book gave me an emotional "frame of reference" from which to speak to the people I met, and I was met with passionate affirmations of the fear, frustration, and outrage that the people there were feeling, being threatened by people who hated them, not for political reasons, but for their ancestry or religion.

Imagine: You walk outside one day and suddenly people on the street are drawing lines between people where they never drew them before. They taunt, persecute, even shoot at people who look just like them, went to school with them, and live across the street from them. This is not a phenomenon limited to Bosnians. It's a human phenomenon, and it's happening right now, in the U.S. between narrow-minded Americans and people who they fear for illegitimate reasons.

Kubert succeeds in framing, accurately, how, given the right chain of events, the seeming tight knot of trust and brotherhood in society can quickly unravel.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars lacks something, November 8, 2001

By 

C. D. Murphy (Natick, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fax From Sarajevo (Paperback)

This is a sad story and I applaud Kubert for putting the effort into making this and trying to relay what happened in Sarajevo to people. However the style doesn't suit the story. The drawing and thought bubbles are just too reminiscent of a super her comic. If you compare the book to Sacco's "Safe Area", the stories are very similiar and equally heart breaking, but the presentation lends to the horror in Sacco's book. That being said, Sacco was there, while Kubert is basically translating from communications. He does a good job of relating from the faxes, but you come away feeling that this could have been so much better.

I think you should read it if interested, but Sacco's I think should be taught in schools. So make sure to get that one.

5.0 out of 5 stars The War We Ignored, June 10, 2011

By 

Cedarwolf - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Fax From Sarajevo (Paperback)

Joe Kubert has brought to the graphic novel genre a tale which has become relevant again because of current events. The war on Sarajevo was largely ignored by the American citizenry, with the exception of some special ops troops and our NATO allotments. Because of the recent arrest of the mass murderer Mladivic, who orchestrated the massacres in Sarajevo, Americans are once again being warned about their isolationist mentality.

The art is classic Kubert. The scripting is tight and well done. The story is relevant. This is one of the texts I use when teaching the Literature of the Graphic Word at the college level because of its high quality and social relevance.

Outstanding work by an outstanding team.