Graphic Novel: Love in the Times of Maoism

Sometimes in the winter, Siv walks past the single-family homes in her small town in northern Sweden and thinks “that there is only one thing that keeps all these single-family home lives going: that the couples sleep together. If they stop and have sex with other people… well, the houses will soon be up for sale, one by one.” It’s the 70s, Siv has two children and works for the youth organization of the Social Democrats, her husband Börje for the steel workers’ union. She is more likely to have sex with Ulrik, a young Maoist, than with Börje. Ulrik lives just two streets away. The power of love and politics: »Okay… but if the revolution comes, as you say… then who do you want to shoot? Me?” she asks him in bed in front of the Karl Marx poster. “You believe that? It’s clear that I’m not going to shoot you,” Ulrik replies. “But if I’m considered an enemy of the people?” – “You can’t be. You’re a worker.” – “I’m an office worker.” – “You’re on our side of the people.” – “But a little misguided?” – “You’re okay for a socialite.”

Love is like left-wing politics: it divides the working class, families and single-family homes. And first of all, the left-wing groups: “Perhaps you are secretly a socialist?” Ulrik is asked sternly by his comrades – after they have secretly searched his things and found his love letters. Being a socialist is the worst accusation of the Maoists. For the Sozis, it’s love for someone other than your husband – Börje has told everyone that Siv told him shortly after Christmas that she wanted to separate from him. She is brave and Ulrik is shy; he barely manages to sell the newspaper of his small left-wing party. “We love each other. We can’t do anything about it,” he tells his comrades, “isn’t anything private?” What do you think, dear readers, what is the comrades’ answer? And what will Ulrik do now?

Anneli Furmark: Red Winter. Ad Swed. v. Katharina Erben. Avant-Verlag, 168 pp., br., €25.

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