Jason Lutes – författare

The third and final act of Jason Lutes s historical fiction about the Weimar Republic begins with Hitler arriving in Berlin. With the National Socialist party now controlling Parliament, the citizenry becomes even more divided. Lutes steps back from the larger political upheaval, using the intertwining lives of a small group of Germans to zero in on the rise of fascism and how swiftly it can replace democracy. The idle rich, the naive bourgeoisie, and the struggling lower classes: all seek meaning in the warring political factions dividing their nation. He especially focuses on the Brauns?a working-class family torn apart by a political system that doesn t care about them. Lovers couple and uncouple; families and friends share rituals and laughter; most of Berlin s citizens go about their day with little sense of the larger threat to their existence. Meanwhile, the journalist Kurt Severing and the artist Marthe Muller watch in horror as their society begins a dizzying descent into extremism. Lutes Berlin Book Three: City of Light is one of the most anticipated graphic novels of 2018, and the long-awaited conclusion to his beloved trilogy.

Berlin is one of the high-water marks of the comics medium. For twenty years, Jason Lutes toiled on this intimate, sweeping epic before the collected Berlin was published in 2018 to widespread acclaim, including rave reviews in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Vulture, Washington Post, and many other outlets. Lutes s historical fiction about the decline of the Weimar Republic and the rise of fascism is seen through the eyes of the Jews and the Nazis; the socialists and the socialites; the lavishly decorated queer clubs and the crumbling tenement apartments. Marthe Muller is an aspiring artist escaping the memory of a brother killed in World War One by throwing herself into a life-altering romance. Kurt Severing is an idealistic journalist losing faith in the printed word as fascism and extremism take hold. The Brauns are a family torn apart by poverty, politics, and the May Day protests of 1929. The Cocoa Kids are an American jazz band slowly realizing there s no place left for them in a changing Berlin. Lutes weaves these characters lives into the larger fabric of a city slowly ripping apart, crafting a polyphonic novel that is rich in its historical detail and as timely as ever in its depiction of a society slowly awakening to the stranglehold of fascism.