Anna Di Lellio – författare

From February 1998 until June 1999, a war between the forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army ravaged Kosovo. The counterinsurgency quickly turned into a state-led campaign of ethnic cleansing that resulted in the killing, deportation, and rape of thousands of Albanian civilians. While it is estimated that over 20,000 women were victims of sexual violence during the war, for nearly two decades after its end, few survivors have come forward to publicly discuss what they endured. In The Strongest Link, Anna Di Lellio and Garentina Kraja aim to break that silence by presenting an oral history of women who survived weaponized rape during the Kosovo War. In their own voices, twenty women describe the war's terror, as well as the nightmares that still haunt them today. Through these narratives, readers are given a glimpse into what it's like to be a woman whose life has been altered and undone by a violent regime, war, and patriarchal rules. We see how these women suffered, but also how they exhibited immense bravery and an unflagging dedication to their families and communities. Di Lellio and Kraja contextualize these narratives within a history of state repression, ethnic cleansing, and lack of justice. By weaving these women's stories together and placing them within a chronological storyline, these stories can be read as one might listen to a choir: Each woman's unique voice and story can be heard, but their power lies in a shared song, a story of courage and strength.

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 –was 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 Long Winter of 1945 situates the events in Tivari 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.

This book makes the case for the independence of Kosova – the former province of 'old-Yugoslavia' and now temporarily a United Nations-led International protectorate – at a time in which international diplomacy is deeply involved in solving the contested issue of its 'Final Status'. The aim of the book is to counteract the anti-Albanian propaganda waged by some parties, but never to propose a counter-propaganda hostile to others or to the goals of a democratic Kosova.