Fatherland

Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Joe Sacco's Palestine, Nina Bunievac's graphic memoir Fatherland tells the story of her own family, torn apart by nationalism and the terrible collective traumas that accompanied the history of the Balkans in the 20th century. In 1975, terrified of her own husband, whose fanaticism was growing, Nina Bunevac's mother ran away from him and left Canada, taking little Nina and her older sister to Yugoslavia, where her parents lived. Nina's father, Petr, an ardent Serbian nationalist, had to leave his homeland in the 1950s. But moving to Canada did not diminish his faith in a free Yugoslavia and in the fact that it is possible to fight for it in any way.

"Fatherland" by Nina Bunevats is an incredible manifestation of personal history against the background of the era. Bunevac shows the historical events of the Balkans through the prism of the lives of individual people. Her hot-headed, temperamental father brings nothing but pain and grief to the family and seems unworthy of sympathy. But we see the tragedy and peculiar greatness of this closed, desperate person who, trapped by the forces of history and bad choices, lived a life full of endless unhappiness - but also a special meaning and a desire for a higher goal.