Fatherland: A Family History

by Nina Bunjevac

Overview

New York Times Bestseller
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice Selection
Winner of the Doug Wright Award for Best Book
Shortlisted for the PACA Literary Award

"A heartfelt and extremely absorbing examination of exile, reconciliation and destructive politics…as vividly immediate as any headline." —Rachel Cooke, Guardian

Standing alongside Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Joe Sacco's Palestine, Nina Bunjevac's Fatherland renders the searing history of the Balkans in the twentieth century through the experiences of the author and her family. In 1975, fearing her husband’s growing fanaticism, Nina Bunjevac's mother fled her marriage and adopted country of Canada, taking Nina—then only a toddler—and her older sister back to Yugoslavia to live with her parents. Her husband and Nina's father, Peter, was a die-hard Serbian nationalist who was forced to leave his country in the 1950s. Remaining in Canada, he became involved with a terrorist organization bent on overthrowing the Communist Yugoslav government and attacking its supporters in North America. Then in 1977, while his family was still in Yugoslovia, Peter was killed in an accidental explosion while building a bomb.

Through exquisite and haunting black-and-white art, Nina Bunjevac documents the immediate circumstances surrounding her father's death and provides a sweeping account of the former Yugoslovia under Fascism and Communism, telling an unforgettable true story of how the scars of history are borne by family and nation alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781631490316
Publisher:	Liveright Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	01/19/2015
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	8.50(w) x 10.90(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

Nina Bunjevac was born in Canada in 1973. Having started her art training in Yugoslavia, she moved to Toronto in 1990, where she continued her studies. She lives in Toronto.

Editorial Reviews

Bunjevac begins and ends the book with the images of birds—a framing device that evokes migration, instability and the cruelty of nature. Yet, her drawing style—with its scrupulous attention to photographic likeness, its uniform crosshatching and thick black outlines—makes her human characters appear solid and substantial; their movements and postures expressive in a deliberate, economical way that recalls the work of Joe Sacco…Ultimately, this is a beautiful, sad and necessary book—I only wish it were longer.

The New York Times Book Review - Anya Ulinich

09/15/2014
Bunjevac’s debut graphic novel is a fascinating, eerie memoir of her fraught family history of exile and immigration, focusing on her father’s involvement in a violent Serbian nationalist group that, in the 1970s, attempted to overthrow the Communist regime in Yugoslavia. The author herself appears as only a peripheral character, mostly as a small child. The central figures of the story are her parents, and she follows them as they face difficult challenges, such as extricating themselves from the terrorist group, and being forced to sacrifice one child for the sake of the others. The book is heavy on narration, and since the action spans many locations and decades of Nina’s family history, sometimes it’s difficult to get to know any character very well. Yet Bunjevac is masterful at presenting an impression of the confusion, disruption, and fear ingrained in the family. The illustrations are unusual and extraordinarily rendered. Most are stiff and ominous, like lost photographs, the cross-hatching so tight and even that the figures look like they are molded from snakeskin—a very effective manifestation of the darkness and distance of the book. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2014-10-08
An ambitious graphic memoir that succeeds on a number of different levels.Born in Canada, raised in her family's native Yugoslavia and having returned to Canada, Bunjevac (Heartless, 2012) addresses the history of a troubled region that brought her to where she is—both in the book (which finds her reminiscing from her home in Toronto and conjuring a past she didn't experience firsthand) and in her life. The title has dual meanings, as "fatherland" refers to the country of Yugoslavia, where German occupation gave way to communist rule and where Serbs and Croats experienced continual tension despite similar roots. The country no longer exists. Neither does the author's father, as she tries to penetrate the mysteries of this particular "fatherland." A Serbian nationalist committed to overthrowing the communist leader Josip Broz Tito, he had been imprisoned in his native Yugoslavia and exiled to Canada upon release, never allowed to return to his fatherland. He became involved with a terrorist organization operating throughout North America, targeting those who supported the Yugoslavian government, and he died in an explosion in the garage where the sect had been manufacturing bombs. By this point, the author and her mother had returned to Yugoslavia, fleeing from the man who had become dangerous, erratic and increasingly alcoholic ("Dad is a nervous wreck. At this time he is certain that he's being followed"). Thus, the narrative artistry must reconstruct not only the father's life before and after his family left him, but the decades (even centuries) of Balkan history that led them all to this juncture. That it covers so much in such a short memoir, and in such compelling and provocative fashion, attests to the author's mastery over such powerful material. The personal perspective humanizes historical currents that might otherwise seem abstract and inexplicable to American readers.

Kirkus Reviews