cover image Fatherland: A Family History

Fatherland: A Family History

Nina Bunjevac. Norton/Liveright, $19.95 (160p) ISBN 978-1-63149-031-6

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.)