In 'Fatherland,' A Daughter Outlines Her Dad's Radicalization
How her research about him changed her views
I look at his childhood. He was born in a Serbian village in Croatia in '36, so by the time that he was 5, the war had started. And Croatia was a fascist country at the time. The Serbs were also deported to the Jasenovac concentration camp. My father's father was killed in Jasenovac in 1945. He loses his mother shortly after the war.
But even before that, his father was very violent. And his mother lived under so much stress that I think that she basically died very young from witnessing the war and the aggression in the family. So I think that my father was ... being exposed to the same. I don't think that he really had much of a choice.
After the war, he was behaving oddly. He began to torture animals. His grandparents sent him to military school because that was they only way they thought they could deal with that kind of behavior. These days we know about PTSD, we know about childhood traumas like that. You know, he probably, in this day and age, he would have received years of therapy. ...
I think I understand where he comes from. I do not agree [with] his actions. I do not agree with his ideology. But I do understand.
On reproducing family photographs for the book
It was really interesting doing reproductions of these photographs, because in order to do so, I had to scan them and then zoom in. And it really resembled detective work, because I would discover things.
Book Reviews
A Cool, Painstaking Account Of A Difficult Past In 'Fatherland
For example, my grandmother, my father's mother — who was basically abused by her husband physically — when I scanned this picture of her and her younger sister Mara, I noticed that the photograph of my grandmother, where her face was, was very light, kind of like a very overexposed look. You couldn't really see it. And then I zoomed in, and thanks to Photoshop, I was able to bring out the tones and realize that she had a black eye that the photographer tried to hide. ...
Then, scanning in pictures from my early childhood was very difficult. Drawing that, looking at facial expressions. My mom not smiling. My sister kind of having a forced smile, you know, "Smile for Daddy, for the photograph." And me, who has a face that can't hide emotion, as I say in the book, and in every photograph I look really angry or sad.
That was probably the best part ... using the photographs, because I really think it makes the whole story a little bit more real and brings it home.
Read An Excerpt Of 'Fatherland'
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Courtesy of Liveright Publishing
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Courtesy of Liveright Publishing
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Courtesy of Liveright Publishing
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Serbia
graphic memoirs
Terrorism