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  • Published: 1 June 2007
  • ISBN: 9780224080897
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 236
  • RRP: $58.00

Safe Area Gorazde

The War in Eastern Bosnia 1992-95



The first UK publication of Joe Sacco's classic, groundbreaking work of comics journalism with a foreword by Christopher Hitchens.

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.

Still surrounded by Bosnian Serb forces, the mainly Muslim people of Gorazde had endured heavy attacks and severe privation to hang on to their town while the rest of Eastern Bosnia was brutally 'cleansed' of its non-Serb population. But as much as Safe Area Gorazde is an account of a terrible siege, it presents a snapshot of people who were slowly letting themselves believe that a war was ending and that they had survived.

Since it was first published in 2000, Safe Area Gorazde has been recognized as one of the absolute classics of graphic non-fiction. We are delighted to publish it in the UK for the first time, to stand beside Joe Sacco's other books on the Cape list - Palestine, The Fixer and Notes from a Defeatist.

  • Published: 1 June 2007
  • ISBN: 9780224080897
  • Imprint: Jonathan Cape
  • Format: Trade Paperback
  • Pages: 236
  • RRP: $58.00

About the author

Joe Sacco

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: Goražde, 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.

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Praise for Safe Area Gorazde

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