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W the Whore

W the Whore

by Anke Feuchtenberger and Katrin de Vries, translated from the German by Mark David Nevins, interview by Madeleine Schwartz

$39.95
$39.95
Comics & Graphic Novels German Literature International Literature
Format

Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West German–born Katrin de Vries read a magazine featuring the drawings of the East German–born Anke Feuchtenberger. De Vries wrote to ask Feuchtenberger if she might want to collaborate, and together they’ve produced some of the most striking German comics of the last thirty years, most notably W the Whore.

Collected here in English for the first time, W the Whore, W the Whore Makes Her Tracks, and W the Whore Throws the Glove present the shared vision of de Vries and Feuchtenberger at its most ambitious. The titular heroine, W the Whore, drawn in a shifting guise by Feuchtenberger, navigates the tedious rituals of womanhood, the unsettling mysteries of male desire, and the strangeness of motherhood, all while moving through a familiar but hostile everyday landscape of houses, factories, rail yards, and other ominous structures. An intimate and captivating work of comics, W the Whore is a testament to the challenges of existing in the bodies that we have been fated to inhabit, and what we do to persevere.

Additional Book Information

Series: New York Review Comics
ISBN: 9781681376721
Pages: 256
Publication Date:

Praise

The writing is minimalist and matter-of-fact, occasionally vetero-testamentary in tone... as a critique of both the eternal feminine and mainstream feminism, W the Whore stresses the importance and the value of imagination and creativity over social analysis and commentary......A translator’s note and an interview with the authors provide valuable information on the collaboration between writer and artist, the origin of the series, and its cult following. In the end, W the Whore may never find what she is looking for, but when she meets R the Reader, it is love at first sight.
—World Literature Today

Anke Feuchtenberger and Katrin de Vries’s W the Whore has been collected in its entirety in English (translated from the German by Mark David Nevins) for the first time. Its heroine negotiates desire, marriage and childbirth in a stark, intimate and sometimes very funny book about life and gender roles.
—James Smart, The Guardian “Best Graphic Novels of 2023”

W the Whore is a succession of comics formed out of disconnection and rupture. Its creators came together from opposite sides of the Berlin Wall’s rubble, and the resulting nine stories concern the violent confusion enacted on women’s bodies by patriarchy, the labyrinthine structures women are placed within under patriarchy’s chilling shadow, and the mounting contradictions enacted upon women deemed to be whores.
—Helen Chazan, The Comics Journal

[P]oetic and dreamlike collection of graphic parables.
—Publishers Weekly

Trained under the doctrines of socialist realism, engaged in traditional printmaking techniques obsolete in West German art academies, and working without an established comics canon, Feuchtenberger pushed German comics into a new realm, redefining the medium in cultural, political and aesthetic terms. As an artist, Feuchtenberger redefined the potentials of the comics form through her engagement with diverse sources and new techniques in graphic narration, elevating the medium to an art form.
—Elizabeth Nijdam, World Literature Today

W the Whore—like many other characters in Feuchtenberger’s dream worlds—encounters prefabricated patterns, powerful social structures that she would like to co-opt and assimilate. But these patterns and orders are random, questionable and replaceable. Breaking up, expanding and exploring are part of Feuchtenberger’s process. Her comics are treatises, ‘graphic essays.’ The clear drawings, pencil on paper or charcoal on canvas, leave a lot of free space, white surfaces creating contrasts between darkness and luminosity.
—Martin Reiterer, Eurozine

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