Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg

An “utterly brilliant” graphic novel biography of the dramatic life and death of German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg (Guardian).

“ . . . a tour de force . . . a straightforward and intellectually honest introduction to [Luxumburg’s] politics and theoretical contributions.” —Los Angeles Review of Books

A giant of the political left, Rosa Luxemburg is one of the foremost minds in the canon of revolutionary socialist thought. But she was much more than just a thinker. She made herself heard in a world inimical to the voices of strong-willed women. She overcame physical infirmity and the prejudice she faced as a Jew to become an active revolutionary whose philosophy enriched every corner of an incredibly productive and creative life—her many friendships, her sexual intimacies, and her love of science, nature and art.

Always opposed to World War I, when others on the German left were swept up on a tide of nationalism, she was imprisoned and murdered in 1919 fighting for a revolution she knew to be doomed.

In this beautifully drawn work of graphic biography, writer and artist Kate Evans has opened up her subject’s intellectual world to a new audience, grounding Luxemburg’s ideas in the realities of an inspirational and deeply affecting life.

Kate Evans is a cartoonist, artist, and activist. She is the author of numerous books and zines including Bump: How to Make, Grow and Birth a Baby and Funny Weather: Everything You Didn't Want to Know about Climate Change but Probably Should Find Out.

Paul Buhle, formerly a Senior Lecturer at Brown University, produces radical comics and is a recipient of an Eisner Award, the comics industry’s Oscars. He founded the SDS journal Radical America and the archive Oral History of the American Left and, with Mari Jo Buhle, is coeditor of the Encyclopedia of the American Left. He lives in Madison.