After Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, German-American graphic artist Nora Krug contacted a Russian-born Ukrainian journalist and a Russian artist. Based on one year's correspondance, Krug made Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts of Ukraine and Russia. Here, two perspectives on the war are presented alongside each other on the page. Both are opposed to the war, but live on either side of the border.
As with the critically acclaimed and award-winning Belonging from 2019, Diaries of War mixes graphic novel, scrapbook and memoar to create a truthful and multifaceted portrait of the war's consequences for civilians. Through text and image, Krug tells the victims' stories in a gripping and original way.
Like Krug, Norwegian author Simon Stranger also bends genre and form to animate lived experiences of war. In Museum for Murderers and Saviours, objects, photographs and physical places structure the story of Stranger's wife's family history, which involves both Jewish and antisemittic aspects of the holocaust in Norway. Museum for Murderers and Saviours explores the grey areas of war through the stories of defectors, among which a grandfather who published antisemittic pamphlets. Can one person be both a hero and a villain?
Stranger and Krug have read each other with great enthusiasm. Krug herself has said that in a time of rising antisemittism, Stranger's award-winning novel Keep Saying Their Names inspires deep feelings of togetherness and the familial bonds to our past.
Now, they meet for a conversation on family, uncovering and depicting war. Interviewer is comic book artist and Russia-scholar Kristian Krohg-Sørensen.
The event is supported by Goethe-Institut.
