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The Eisner Award-winning story about a student figuring out radical politics in a messy world
Sophie’s young and queer and into feminist theory. She decides to study abroad, choosing Paris for no firm reason beyond liking French comics. Feeling a bit lonely and out of place, she’s desperate for community and a sense of belonging. She stumbles into what/who she’s looking for when she meets Zena. An anarchist student-activist committed to veganism and shoplifting, Zena offers Sophie a whole new political ideology that feels electric. Enamored—of Zena, of the idea of living more righteously—Sophie finds herself swept up in a whirlwind friendship that blows her even farther from her rural Californian roots as they embark on a disastrous hitchhiking trip to Amsterdam and Berlin full of couch surfing, drug tripping, and radical book fairs.
Capturing that time in your life where you’re meeting new people and learning about the world—when everything feels vital and urgent—The Contradictions is Sophie Yanow’s fictionalized coming-of-age story. Sophie’s attempts at ideological purity are challenged time and again, putting into question the plausibility of a life of dogma in a world filled with contradictions. Keenly observed, frank, and very funny, The Contradictions speaks to a specific reality while also being incredibly relatable, reminding us that we are all imperfect people in an imperfect world.
ALISON BECHDEL created the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, which ran from 1983 to 2008. In 2006, her graphic memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, was named Best Book of the year by Time Magazine. A musical based on Fun Home, written by Lisa Kron and Jeanine Tesori, won five Tony Awards in 2015, including best musical. Bechdel’s second graphic memoir, Are You My Mother? was named one of Time Magazine’s top ten books of 2012. She has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships. She’s currently finishing up a third graphic memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength.
SOPHIE YANOW is an artist and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Contradictions is her first book with Drawn & Quarterly, the webcomic of which won an Eisner Award and was nominated for the Ringo, and Harvey awards. Yanow is also the author of What is a Glacier? and War of Streets and Houses. Her comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Fusion, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Nib. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and her translation of Dominique Goblet’s Pretending is Lying received the Scott Moncrieff prize for translation from French. Yanow has taught at the Center for Cartoon Studies, the New Hampshire Institute of Art, and The Animation Workshop in Denmark.
