The internationally acclaimed activist follows up her satirical work of graphic medicine with this collection of humorous comics essays about how historical and societal shifts have altered - and perhaps destroyed - "romantic love." The deceptively simple through-line for Swedish media personality and activist Liv Strömquist's The Reddest Rose is the question: Why does Leonardo DiCaprio date an endless string of twentysomething models? Her answer - in the form of this collection of well-researched, humorous comics essays - tracks how philosophers and artists, from the Ancient Greeks to Beyoncé, conceptualized romantic love. Strömquist's signature interlocutor characters, drawn in a zine-y, flat, blocky style, ask each other questions and offer sharp commentary as they guide readers throughout history and the change in societies' values, from showing love/loving to getting love/being loved. (Poet Hilda "H.D." Doolittle - who was so love-stricken by a man taking off his glasses that she believed they viewed dolphins together in another dimension - lends the book its title.) Lord Byron, Socrates, Byung-Chul Han, Ezra Pound, Slavoj Žižek, Lou Andreas-Salomé, Ariadne, and many others make cameos. For the first time in English, in The Reddest Rose, Strömquist wonders: in a rationalist, consumerist world, can romantic love survive?
Liv Strömquist was born in Sweden and lives in Malmö. She is a radio host with a degree in political science. An activist, her left-leaning, award-winning comics have been published in zines and magazines. Fruit of Knowledge has sold 40,000 copies in Sweden, been adapted for the stage, and has been published worldwide.
