In late 1995 and early 1996, cartoonist/reporter Joe Sacco travelled four times to Gorazde, a UN-designated safe area during the Bosnian War, which had teetered on the brink of obliteration for three and a half years.
Review
Sacco has produced a work that improbably manages to combine rare insight into what the war in Bosnia felt like on the ground with a mature and nuanced political and historical understanding of the conflict... Of the myriad books that have appeared about Bosnia, few have told the truth more bravely than Sacco. He is an immense talent, from whom we will hear a great deal more. -- David Rieff ? New York Times Book Review
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
Like Art Spiegelman's Maus, Sacco's book juxtaposes the pop style of comics with human tragedy, making the brutality of war all the more jarring. ? Time
Can comics do hard-hitting journalism? That’s the question asked – and answered – by this wonderful piece of long-form reporting ? World of Cruising
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. His books 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.
Christopher Hitchens was an English-born American author, journalist and literary critic. He was a columnist at Vanity Fair, The Atlantic, World Affairs, The Nation, Slate, Free Inquiry, and a variety of other media in a career that spanned more than four decades and made him a prominent public intellectual, and a staple of talk shows and lecture circuits. His books include The Monarchy; Blood, Class, and Nostalgia; No One Left to Lie Toand God Is Not Great. He died in 2011.