Book Review - Red Rosa: A Graphic Biography of Rosa Luxemburg by Kate Evans

A thoroughgoing introduction to a socialist pioneer.

While I know very little about the history of Marxism and socialism, particularly in Germany, Red Rosa went a long way to improve my knowledge. Rosa Luxemburg is an underdog with tenacious bite, overcoming physical disability and expectations of polite society at a time when a young woman was severely limited in her political aspirations and opportunities to make change.

Evans manages to balance Rosa's documented beliefs with interpreted facts about her social life and even a little metatextual humour. More so than her work for the party and numerous publications, I responded most to Rosa's vibrant yet emotionally intelligent love life and the epiphanies she experienced while incarcerated.

While my immersion was sometimes spoiled by odd bodily proportions, I appreciated Evans' clean caricature. The splash pages featuring WW1 soldiers marching to their death over Rosa's bowed head and then the wounded soldiers seeping out of a buffalo's eye were utterly breath-taking.

My main bugbear with Red Rosa was the pacing. I feel that Evans' passion for Rosa's insight into Marxism and outspoken socialist beliefs sometimes slowed the narrative down and asserted reader focus where really we should be shown Rosa's life with as much impartiality as possible. Towards the end it felt like Evans was more interested in a political call to arms rather than a full depiction of Rosa's life. I wanted to know more about her family ties over the years, and what became of her lovers, but these details fell by the wayside on the march to revolution.

In any case I am glad to have read Red Rosa. It has educated me on yet another woman who changed the world, despite patriarchal and Soviet suppression. I recommend Red Rosa to amateur historians of the socialist movement and champions of the graphic biography.