Joe Sacco's book "Palestine" is great. detractors would say almost ludicrously biased but if you're that way inclined anyway then you'd like it as much as I did, as a social history. If anything, Palestine has a little too much of Sacco in, whereas Gorazde gets the balance very right.

It's shocking to me how much of this I'd forgotten the detail of - exactly what led Bosnia and it's three ethnic factions to come to this misery and horror. It really is a bit of a kick in the face that should spur you on to read some more about the war. A war that happened on our European doorsteps and led neighbour to torture and kill neighbour in a frightening loss of human dignity and understanding.

As per bloody usual, the international community doesn't exactly come up smelling of roses.

What Sacco's managed to perfect in this book is his retelling of individuals' tales of (almost uniformly) woe, punctuated by honest humour or sickening nausea.

It's really, really good.