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themorsecode's review
3.0
An undeniably incredible woman, Evans has clearly done her research to tell Luxemburg's inspiring if ultimately tragic story. Not sure that the graphic novel is the best format to tell it in, but it works as a good introduction and primer.
elleneam's review
3.0
Generally a good books, with a nice use of quotations and good illustrations. My one issue with it is that it tends to paint Luxembourg as a bit of a liberal, especially in her attitude towards Lenin and the Russian revolution, sometimes using quotes of her's detesting the violence from ww1 to suggest she would be against the Russian revolution because people died in the civil war. Let us not forget that she was a fierce revolutionary who was ready to smash the bourgeoisie at whatever cost!
karlzz's review
4.0
Previous to reading this, I had not engaged with any of Rosa Luxemburg's work or known about how significant she is. The combination of the illustrations, historical contextualization of her work, and excerpts of her writing has me feeling very inspired to learn more about her and those she has influenced in socialist thought and practice. I would recommend this to anyone who has a difficult time engaging with dense theoretical texts but is still interested in socialist theory. I would have rated the book 5 stars if it were not for my this complaint - I was surprised to learn that Rosa Luxemburg was a disabled woman and the authors referenced that fact in a way that felt enabling of stigma. It was framed as something that she overcame rather than something that clearly influenced her perspective as she grew up and witnessed the inequality that surrounded her. I would love to see a greater effort of mainstream publications to forge a lineage of disabled people who have had profound influence on the masses.
atnea's review
2.0
Quite the interesting story of this revolutionary woman, Rosa Luxemburg. But I felt like the author should have found a better balance between the story and the historical facts and the fun commentaries. And even thought I don't agree with the communist or socialist ideology, I think that most of the ideas in here were explained in a way that made sense.
obscuredbyclouds's review
4.0
This is a fairly introductionary graphic novel biography of Rosa Luxemburg. I didn't know much about her love life before reading this, but those parts were the ones I found the least well-done actually. There's other ways to describe a love life than through the same sex scenes each time.
Apart from that, some of the wording was a bit strange. It felt like a book for children at times, because the other seemed to want to sum up Rosa Luxemburg's economic and political theories for newbies, it seemed. I'm not sure if she managed to do that well and I also wonder how many people will read this book who don't already know the basic ideas of marxism and socialism. If I didn't, I'd probably found those part confusing.
My last criticism would be that the art is not 100 % my style. I think if I'd been sold on the drawings completely, this would have been a 5 star book despite the other flaws I mentioned. As it stands it's a fairly well-drawn and interesting overview of her life.
I appreciate that at the end of the book there's an explanation of things the author changed for narrative reasons and some contextualisation for some of the scenes.
Apart from that, some of the wording was a bit strange. It felt like a book for children at times, because the other seemed to want to sum up Rosa Luxemburg's economic and political theories for newbies, it seemed. I'm not sure if she managed to do that well and I also wonder how many people will read this book who don't already know the basic ideas of marxism and socialism. If I didn't, I'd probably found those part confusing.
My last criticism would be that the art is not 100 % my style. I think if I'd been sold on the drawings completely, this would have been a 5 star book despite the other flaws I mentioned. As it stands it's a fairly well-drawn and interesting overview of her life.
I appreciate that at the end of the book there's an explanation of things the author changed for narrative reasons and some contextualisation for some of the scenes.
lucual20's review against another edition
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5