Safe Area Goražde is a journalistic comic book about the Bosnian War, written and drawn by Joe Sacco. It was published in 2000. The book describes the author's experiences during four months spent in Bosnia in 1995–96, and is based on conversations with Bosniaks trapped within the enclave of Goražde. Sacco 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. Plot summary Joe Sacco visits Goražde, a mainly Bosniak enclave in eastern Bosnia surrounded by hostile Serb-dominated regions. Sacco visits the locals and gets a first-hand view of the war's brutal effect on the town. The story of Goražde develops through the narrations of Edin, a graduate student who was studying engineering in Sarajevo before the war, and other residents of Goražde. Yugoslavia had been a multi-ethnic country and its cultural pluralism was proudly propagandized throughout the world. Edin and many others recall having fun with their Serb and Croat friends during the Josip Broz Tito era. However, after the death of the charismatic former Partisan leader, the newly elected president of Serbia Slobodan Milošević begins to incite extreme Serb nationalism among the Serb population. By bringing back the painful memories before the Tito era in which bloody conflicts raged between Serbs, Croats and Bosniaks, he succeeds in inciting chauvinistic sentiment among the Serbs. The republics of Slovenia and Croatia, intimidated by the development of the situation, declare independence from Yugoslavia. The political situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina is rapidly deteriorating. The Serbian Democratic Party led by Radovan Karadžić represents the ethnic Serbs and is against disintegration; the Party of Democratic Action and the Croatian Democratic Union, respectively representing Bosniaks and Croats, are in favor of breaking apart from the Yugoslav federation. Bosnian Serbs, fearing that once Bosnia gains independence they would be persecuted by the numerically superior Bosniaks and Croats, organize their armed forces and prepare for the upcoming war. The tension among nations is now visible; Serbs and Bosniaks now go to separate cafés. Vigilantes raised from both