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Safe Area Gorazde s/c [Paperback]

Joe Sacco
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)

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Book Description

January 15, 2001 1560974702 978-1560974703

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. The book features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens, political columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair.

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Safe Area Gorazde s/c + Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic + Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“[Demonstrates] how brilliantly comics can serve as reportage.” (The New York Times )

“Graphic in every sense of the term, Sacco’s account of everyday life in a city under siege puts one of the twentieth century’s least understood catastrophes in perspective; it’s the best argument around for comics as a journalistic medium.” (GQ )

“Harrowing and bleakly humorous, Sacco's account of life during the Balkan conflict is a timeless portrait of ordinary people caught in desperate circumstances. It's also a work of genius in an unlikely genre: journalism in comic book form.” (Utne Reader )

“Sacco's detailed, personal reporting captures his subject matter more convincingly than photographs or Christiane Amanpour.” (Time )

“Joe Sacco is an engaging and direct writer, but above all, he is a good journalist. Comics just happen to be the outlet for his reportage... [he is] a master of the unique medium of comics journalism.” (William Jones - Graphic Novel Reporter )

“Published soon after the conflict that it documents, Safe Area Gorazde is an intense reading experience and an active call for the condemnation of tribal and international leaders who put politics ahead of humanity.” (Suzette Chan - Sequential Tart )

“Joe Sacco is a unique figure in modern comics: there is no one else who combines sheer cartooning chops with a newspaper reporter's sensibility and instincts in quite the same way.... an especially powerful document of the effects of war.” (Ed Howard - Only the Cinema )

About the Author

Joe Sacco lives in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of many acclaimed graphic novels, including Palestine, Safe Area Gorazde, But I Like It, Notes from a Defeatist, The Fixer, War's End, and Footnotes in Gaza.

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) is the author of God Is Not Great, Hitch-22, and Why Orwell Matters.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 240 pages
  • Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (January 15, 2001)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1560974702
  • ISBN-13: 978-1560974703
  • Product Dimensions: 5.1 x 0.8 x 7.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #255,193 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joe Sacco, one of the world's greatest cartoonists, is widely hailed as the creator of war reportage comics. He is the author of, among other books, Palestine, which received the American Book Award, and Safe Area: Gora�de, which won the Eisner Award and was named a New York Times notable book and Time magazine's best comic book of 2000. Hisbooks have been translated into fourteen languages and his comics reporting has appeared in Details, The New York Times Magazine, Time, Harper's and the Guardian. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

Customer Reviews

The drawing style, in pure Black-and-white, is detailed and dynamic. Kristof Raes  |  8 reviewers made a similar statement
First off: this book is difficult to read. nkname  |  7 reviewers made a similar statement
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Scary March 10, 2001
Format:Hardcover
I bought this after reading a (very short) review in The Economist. I also ordered Palestine: A Nation Occupied at the same time. The progression in Sacco's work is incredible. The drawings in Palestine are a little TOO cartoonish but in this they are far more real. Both stories are in their own ways, equally horrific, from the everyday brutality of the occupied territories to the visceral horror of Bosnia and the struggles of its people to live some kind of life. His summary of the events in Bosnia is one of the clearest accounts I have read - from the viciousness of certain Serb leaders to the culpability of the UN - he explains exactly how so many lives were destroyed in such horrific ways.

He is a marvelous talent and his genre is a wonderful way to present news and inform people about current events.

However, the really scary thing is the fact that I want him to produce something else. I want to read his words and examine his pictures, even though I know a world where Sacco is an unemployed bum would be a far better place. But as long as human beings act in disgusting ways towards each other he'll have plenty of material.

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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Truly outstanding January 17, 2001
Format:Hardcover
Someone once strongly recommended that I read this, although I have to admit I wasn't expecting much at first. I was really unsure how the Bosnian war could be rendered in comic strip fashion. However, "Safe Area Gorazde" is incredible: this is one of the best journalistic accounts to come out of the Bosnian war in any format. Sacco recounts the horrific war stories told to him by his friends and acquaintances in Bosnia with a great deal of honesty. He very effectively incorporates his own wit and the dry humor of the Bosnians into his narrative without turning it into a satire. I also like the fact that he was quite critical of the role of foreign reporters and correspondents (including himself) in Bosnia, i.e. their frequent insensitivity or their effective eavesdropping on the suffering of others. His illustrations also speak for themselves as he very accurately recreates the wartime destruction of property and the rag-tag appearance of the people; he has a unique talent for re-creating facial expressions that reflect a range of emotions. Hats off to Mr. Sacco, he deserves every praise for this informative and moving portrayal of wartime and immediate postwar Gorazde.
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32 of 36 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Whatever happened to "never again"? February 14, 2002
Format:Paperback
While graphic novels have been around for quite a while, graphic journalism or history has not. Sacco is a pioneer of this extremely humanistic new genre, and here he bears witness to the horrors of the war in Bosnia. Sacco visited the so-called "safe area" four times in late 1995 and early 1996, and his portrait of a devastated city and its survivors is more affecting than any newspaper account could hope to be. His black ink panels capture in vivid detail not only the scars left on the landscape, but on the people themselves. Sacco alternates between detailing his own visits to Gorazde, a straightforward history of the war, and letting his friends and interviewees recount their own terrible experiences.

His own visits are fairly basic, everyone is frightened and devastated by the war and he experiences the guilt of one able to come and go as he pleases. The history of the war is very clearly told, with maps and pertinent statements from UN leaders, Clinton, Milosavich, et al. Sacco clearly highlights how ineffective and downright cowardly the UN approach was, singling out British Lt. General Rose and French Lt. General Janvier for lying and dissembling in order to avoid conflict, and the Clinton administration for being inept and vacillating toward the Serbs. The history is a stark reminder that in the absence of a superpower with a vested interest, one cannot expect loose multinational efforts to deter genocide. Throughout the war, due to a total lack of leadership and moral will from above, UN forces were pushed around, held hostage, and at times fled into the night rather than protect the civilians they were supposed to. Which brings one to the most compelling and disturbing parts of the book. Sacco supplies images to the testimonials of survivors and witnesses to execution, rape, nonstop civilian shelling, snipers, and even poison gas. Most of the voices from Gorazde are those of Muslim inhabitants or refugees "cleansed" from other areas, and while the stories are chilling enough, what also disturbs is the confusion and pain these people feel because in many cases, it was their former Serb neighbors who participated in it.

Sacco's artistic style may not be to everyone's taste, and certainly this is only a slice of the larger war, but he bears witness and hopefully makes the reader more conscious of the failings of leadership in preventing what was supposed to be "never again." American loves to pat itself on the back for kicking [...butt] in the "good war" against the Nazis, but somehow we've managed to avoid any responsibility for allowing genocide to continue, even when it's been clearly within our ability to do so.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Great book
This is a great title, very interesting read. However the specific copy I received in the mail which was sold as new was all bent and chewed up
Published 10 days ago by Rcp
5.0 out of 5 stars Best book on the subject
I knew very little about this incident in recent history before I picked this book up. It is incredibly informative, powerful, and gripping. This is journalism at its best. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Hip E.
4.0 out of 5 stars Profound, educational, beautiful ...
As a comic book nerd I've long enjoyed Joe Sacco's amazing work. Superb journalism presented in comic book format, he is an artist who reminds us of all of the promise in the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Caitlin Martin
5.0 out of 5 stars A New Journalistic Revelation--not for the faint of heart
In chapter four of his The "New Journalism" Revisited, Rocco Versaci explains that to many New Journalists "all "truth" is mediated, and we ignore this fact at the expense of our... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Kevin F. Tasker
5.0 out of 5 stars A powerful and moving example of journalism expressed in cartoon form
The greatest massacre of people on the European continent since World War II took place in Bosnia in the 1990's. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Charles Ashbacher
5.0 out of 5 stars Great way to learn about a genocide many don't know about
When I started reading the first few pages of this book, I got a little bored and considered stopping. Read more
Published on February 15, 2011 by Incessant Cleaner
4.0 out of 5 stars Affecting and personal
I thought this was excellent. It consists of a series of personal vignettes more than a single narrative, but the vignettes and character sketches are personal, affecting and... Read more
Published on January 3, 2011 by Dunscotus
5.0 out of 5 stars GRAPHIC HORROR
Joe Sacco's SAFE AREA GORAZDE is a gut-wrenching account of the Bosnia War in the mid 1990's told by several survivors who reminiscence about it among the ruins of their former... Read more
Published on December 9, 2010 by Paco Calderón
4.0 out of 5 stars Cautionary Lessons from Modern Day Low Level Warfare
In 1992, the citizens of Gorazde lived in neighborhoods not all that different from Peoria, Modesto, or Orlando. Read more
Published on November 23, 2010 by Texas Jim
4.0 out of 5 stars A stern warning
In addition to being informative and entertaining (in a dark way), Gorazde is a frightening look at what happens when a society breaks down and reverts to tribalism. Read more
Published on November 12, 2010 by Fred Miner
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