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Safe Area Gorazde
 
 
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Safe Area Gorazde [Hardcover]

Joe Sacco (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)

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Safe Area Gorazde is a harrowing documentary comic destined to become a classic of war reporting. In the waning days of the Bosnian war, Joe Sacco, the cartoonist behind the acclaimed Palestine, made several visits to Gorazde, a UN "safe area" that had been repeatedly attacked by Serb forces. He interviewed survivors of the Serb siege and assembled their recollections. Sacco depicts the atrocities of the war in simple, restrained panels, but his attention to detail is everywhere, from the accurate renderings of mortar scars on the landscape to the history lessons carefully embedded throughout the comic.

Sacco never descends into sensationalism or exploitation of the war's victims, but instead adopts a subjective gaze that places readers in hiding spots from which they can only catch glimpses of the murders and rapes. Sacco leaves the particulars of these crimes up to the imagination of his readers, which is appropriate enough given the unthinkable nature of what took place in Gorazde.

The real impact of Safe Area lies in Sacco's immersion in the daily life of Gorazde. While other journalists left Gorazde as soon as they had the clips they needed, Sacco lived in the town for weeks at a time, becoming a vicarious resident. Although the conflict was largely over by this point, Gorazde was still surrounded and Sacco was an eyewitness to his friends' struggle not only to survive but also to maintain their sanity.

Safe Area is not just a catalogue of horrors and a condemnation of international indifference; it's also a moving portrayal of the human capacity to endure almost any hardship. Sacco refuses to fall into any clichés about the triumph of the human spirit here--the people of Gorazde themselves reject such notions--but he does offer up Safe Area as a testament to its survival. --Peter Darbyshire, Amazon.ca

Review

It is difficult to look away from and impossible to forget. -- Publishers Weekly's "PW Daily Book of the Day", 3 August 2001, Edward Nawotka

Of the myriad of books...about Bosnia, few have told the truth more bravely than Sacco's. He is an immense talent. -- David Rieff, The New York Times Book Review --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A personal side of the war in Bosnia, Sep 16 2003
By 
Duncan Stroup "DCallan92" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Safe Area Gorazde s/c (Paperback)
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.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The highest form of art, Aug 12 2003
This review is from: Safe Area Gorazde s/c (Paperback)
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."
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5.0 out of 5 stars Another brilliant work of comics journalism, Oct 13 2002
By 
Dave Thomer (Philadelphia, PA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Safe Area Gorazde s/c (Paperback)
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.

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