The Red Virgin And The Vision Of Utopia

Description

Set against the background of violence and state repression in a turbulent

period of French history, The Red Virgin and the Vision of Utopia

chronicles the incredible and outrageous life of Louise Michel, the

revolutionary feminist dubbed The Red Virgin of Montmartre. A

utopian dreamer, notorious anarchist, teacher, orator and poet, she was

decades ahead of her time. Always a radical, she fought on the barricades

defending the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871 against the reactionary

regime that massacred thousands of French citizens after the Commune's

defeat. Deported to a penal colony on the other side of the Earth, she took

up the cause of the indigenous population against French colonial

oppression. Celebrating the utopian urge in nineteenth-century literature

and politics and the origins of science fiction, The Red Virgin and the

Vision of Utopia is the third collaboration of best-selling academic and

graphic novelist Mary M. Talbot with her husband, the graphic novel pioneer

Bryan Talbot. Their first book together, Dotter of her Father's Eyes,

won the 2012 Costa Biography Award.