Fatherland: A Family History

About the speaker:

Nina Bunjevac

Nina Bunjevac started her art training in Yugoslavia, at the Djordje Krstic School for Applied Arts; in 1990 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she continued her studies in art at the Art Centre of Central Technical School; in 1997 she graduated from OCAD in the Drawing and Painting department. Formerly a painter, a sculptor and an art teacher, Nina found her calling in pen and ink sequential art, a form that seemed to naturally evolve out of the narrative component in her sculpture installation work.

Nina’s comics have appeared in a number of local and international publications: Komikaze (Croatia), Black (Italy), GIUDA (Italy), Stripburger (Slovenia), Zone 5300 (Netherlands), Stripolis (Serbia), ArtReview (UK), Asiatroma/Le Dernier Cri (France), Broken Pencil, Exile, Taddle Creek (Canada), Mineshaft and The Best American Comics (USA).

Her debut collection of comics titled Heartless came out in September 2012 with the Nova Scotia-based publisher Conundrum Press, and was translated and published in France in 2013 by Ici-même Editions. Nina’s second book Fatherland was published in September 2014 with Cape Graphic/Random House in UK and Canada, and was published in the US in January. It is also scheduled to be translated and published in Germany, France, Czech Republic, Spain and Croatia.

In 2011 Nina received The Golden Pen of Belgrade at the 11th International Biennale of Illustration in Belgrade for the cover image of Balkan Women in Comics (Fibra/Croatia), and in 2013 she received The Doug Wright Award in the Spotlight category, also known as The Nipper, for Heartless.

Meeting description:

In this public presentation Nina Bunjevac will discuss her new book Fatherland: A Family History, the story of Bunjevac’s father and the effects of his life on his family as they immigrate from Yugoslavia to Canada, and back, in the shadow of his activities with the émigré nationalist organization “Freedom for the Serbian Fatherland.”

Fatherland is a graphic memoir from the same school as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, a heartfelt and extremely absorbing examination of exile, reconciliation and destructive politics in a far-off time and place: in this case, Tito's Yugoslavia.

Rachel Cooke, The Guardian

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.

Publishers Weekly

Free and open to the public

This is a joint event with the Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies (CREEES). This event is also made possible by the generous co-sponsorship of the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and the History Department.