Recently, Založba ZRC presented a Slovenian translation of the comic War by Goran Duplančić, which was published at the end of last year in a translation by Andrej E. Skubic. “All good books that talk about war are actually anti-war,” ZRC wrote.
As described by the label, it is War a visual narrative about the war of independence in Slovenia through the eyes of the author – a conscript of the JLA, “who on that June 1991, neither guilty nor guilty, found himself in the barracks in Šentvid near Ljubljana, together with young men from all over Yugoslavia. Overnight, the protectors of the common country and its socialist values became, as the author writes in the comic, occupiers, traitors or members foreign legion. Isolated, confused, scared, left to fend for themselves, without water, electricity, food and basic necessities – Goran and his comrades are the last soldiers of the JLA.”
A comic book War at the same time, it directs its gaze towards friendship and trust. “Military service was also traditionally the period in which lifelong friendships were made,” writes when the book is published. Three decades later, the author is employed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb, where he is employed in the department of theoretical physics, they described, among others, at the ZRC.
In Croatia, the comic saw two editions in a short time, and the story is in the Slovenian translation “in a way returned home, to a place where a completely different story was established about the last soldiers of the JLA”.
The comic was recently presented in Ljubljana with a discussion in which Duplančić participated, Tanja Petrovićwho is the author of the foreword, Zoran Smiljanicwho is the author of the comic The last soldier of the JLA and Đorđe Balmazovićmember of the art group Škart and author of the comic War: a witness in drawings (War: a story in drawings).
For younger generations, as they point out, “Yugoslavia survived as a concept, but perhaps in food, films and music”. Therefore, along with the comic, following the proposal of the translator E. Skubic, they also created a Dictionary of JLA Jargon and Translations of Foreign Language Inserts, which mainly serve the lyrics of the songs Bajage, Riblje chorba and Đorđe Balašević.
Tanja Petrović notes in the preface that the stories of individuals often do not fit into the triumphant narrative of national history. War is a story that simply had to be told, he affirms in the last pages of the book Vladimir Shagadineditor Wars in the Croatian original, where it was published in 2020, they say at ZRC.
Source: Rtvslo
