Safe Area Gorazde: The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995 
Safe Area Gorazde is Joe Sacco's 240-page opus about the war in the former Yugoslavia. Sacco spent four months in Bosnia in 1995-1996, immersing himself in the human side of life during wartime, researching stories rarely found in conventional news coverage. The book focuses on the Muslim enclave of Gorazde, which was besieged by Bosnian Serbs during the war. Sacco spent four weeks in Gorazde, entering before the Muslims trapped inside had access to the outside world, electricity or running water.
The hardcover edition of Safe Area Gorazde put Sacco on the map as one of the pre-eminent journalists of his time, and the softcover edition will present his work to a wider audience. The book has been prominently featured in The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Time, Utne Reader, Spin, The London Times, The Washington Post, Brill's Content, several NPR programs, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Economist, The Atlantic Monthly, and other media. The book also led to Sacco being named a recipient of a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. Safe Area Gorazde features an introduction by Christopher Hitchens, political columnist for The Nation and Vanity Fair.
Reviews
Joe Sacco's spent some time in Gorazde after things calmed down a bit over there-- got to know the people, talked to them a lot, blended in with the scenery. He drew them, related their words, drew the things they saw and experienced day to day. Safe Area Gorazde is the result.
If you're used to either the current spate of war memoirs or the current spate of graphic novels, Safe Area Gorazde will likely seem familiar, yet still somewhat out of place. It is a book that resides comfortably in neither category, but I can't quite call it a successful cross of the two; it's too narrative for graphic noveldom, while being too impressionist to really classify as a war memoir. This is not to say that the book is bad by any means; there is a great deal to be absorbed here, and given the short shrift received by the plight of Gorazde as it was happening in the American press, far more Americans should be absorbing it than already have. Sacco has a gentle, self-deprecating humor, and the kind of ear that turns even the most unpleasant interviewee into a sympathetic character. As well, while most of Sacco's drawings are straightforward-- there are an almost unsettling number of scenes in this book featuring a single character against a monochrome background, as if being interviewed on a talk show (or up against a wall being faced by a firing squad)-- every once in a while one pops out that makes you realize that, yes, there's a war going on in Gorazde as Sacco is conducting these interviews. The scarcity of the out-and-out brutal pictures makes them all the more effective in Sacco's pastiche of desperation, loss, and ever-present gallows humor.
Good stuff, this. ***
The book also does a nice job giving the history of the war, including the role Clinton played, for those who don't remember the 1990s. Please rread this book. You can do it in a day.
Comparisons to Joe Kubert's "Fax from Sarajevo" are inevitable. As journalism, "Safe Area Gorazde" is a much superior work, though as a comic book, "Fax from Sarajevo" is far, far better. But then, Kubert is a grandmaster of the craft, after all, just as Sacco is more directly experienced with graphic-format documentaries.
Fortunately, you don't have to choose between the two. You can (and should) read them both!