Amor Patriae in Literary Journalism

Abstract

The Homeland War in Croatia (1991-1995) resulted with a relatively great production of various hybrid nonfiction genres. War journalism in the mainstream media mainly reported facts by young unexperienced journalists. War reporting was dry and nowhere close to literary journalism. With one exception. In November 1991, Joža Vlahović, the doyen of Croatian journalism went to the frontline as a war reporter. This resulted in a series of short stories that fall into a wider scope called new journalism, literary journalism, immersion journalism, or narrative nonfiction. Hence, the research of these texts which were first published as war reports in 1991 in newspapers, and twenty years later gathered in a book significantly titled “Onaj rat je bio bolji” (That War Was Better), is a multidisciplinary research effort within literature and communication sciences to investigate these brilliant stories of a specific genre in always intriguing common ground of literature and journalism.