Awards

• Runner-up for AAP PROSE Award in Nonfiction Graphic Novels Awarded by The Association of American Publishers 2024 (United States)

Overview

In March 1945, at the end of the Second World War, hundreds of unarmed Albanian recruits were massacred by Yugoslav partisans. For too long, the memory of this massacre in Tivari - a coastal town in Montenegro - has been suppressed by the Yugoslav state and kept alive in Kosovo only in informal versions, nurtured and retold in a spirit of ethnic mistrust and hatred. Depicted in graphic format, The Long Winter of 1945 presents an oral history of this traumatic event based on interviews with surviving participants. Archival documents and historical research provide context, placing the massacre in the broader setting of forced mass mobilization to fight, as well as the last pocket of Italian resistance. The book reveals that the massacre was not a forgettable incident of history, as the censored or sanitized official narrative of Yugoslav history would like it to be remembered, nor was it a planned act of genocide, as described by informal oral versions, repeated with undertones of fear and anger, and passed along as underground collective memory. The Long Winter of 1945 places its history into the broader context of Yugoslavia's war for liberation and the civil war between Serbs and Albanians. Bringing this traumatic event to the fore, this beautifully illustrated graphic novel rescues the memory of the victims and survivors from political exploitation.

Full Product Details

9781487543297

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Reviews

"""The Long Winter of 1945 is powerful and striking in its depiction of the protagonists and narrators of this largely forgotten trauma. The graphic format, driven by survivors' voices, bears witness to the disease, hunger, despair, and desperation of wartime."" - Keith Brown, Arizona State University ""Featuring　stupendous artwork, The Long Winter of 1945 is a rare and much-needed contribution.　At the core of the book is the difficult story of the killing of hundreds of Albanians in Tivari, and how this poorly understood episode fits within the scheme of the Second World War. In untangling this episode, Anna Di Lellio and Dardan Luta invite readers to think about how memory works, how trauma lives on across　generations, how historical events are forgotten or manipulated, and how the local powerfully illuminates the human and the universal."" - Elidor Mëhilli, Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York"

Author Information

Anna Di Lellio is a lecturer at the MA in International Relations (MAIR) at New York University. Dardan Luta is a graphic designer and teaches Multimedia Design in the Department of Art and Digital Media at UBT Higher Education Institution.

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