The Reddest Rose: Romantic Love from the Ancient Greeks to Reality TV

By Liv Strömquist

The deceptively simple through-line for Swedish media personality and activist Liv Str?mquist's The Reddest Rose is the question: Why does Leonardo DiCaprio date an endless string of 20-something 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 Beyonc?, conceptualized romantic love. Str?mquist's signature characters, drawn in a 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 Zizek, Lou Andreas-Salom?, Ariadne, and many others have cameos. For the first time in English, in The Reddest Rose, Str?mquist wonders: in a rationalist, consumerist world, can romantic love survive?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1683964594
• ISBN13: 9781683964599
• Release Date: January 2023
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
• Length: 184 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.8" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up