Irmina

Description

In the mid-1930s, lrmina, an ambitious young German, moves to London. At a cocktail party, she meets Howard Green, one of the first Black students at Oxford, who, like lrmina, is working towards an independent existence. However, their relationship comes to an abrupt end when lrmina, constrained by the political situation in Hitler's Germany, is forced to return home. As war approaches and her contact with Howard is broken, it becomes clear to lrmina that prosperity will only be possible through the betrayal of her ideals. In the award-winning /RM/NA, Barbara Yelin presents a troubling drama about the tension between integrity and social advancement. Based on a true story, this moving and perceptive graphic novel perfectly conjures the oppressive atmosphere of wartime Germany, reflecting on the complicity that results from the choice, conscious or otherwise, to look away.

Barbara Yelin was born in 1977 in Munich and studied illustration at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences. She first came to prominence as a graphic artist in France, before gaining recognition in Germany for her book Gift (with a script by Peer Meter), published in 2010. Yelin has worked as a comics artist for newspapers and international anthologies, but her work largely focuses on research-based, historical, and biographical graphic novels, mainly about women. Supported by GoetheInstitute Israel, Yelin commemorated the life of the Israeli actress Channa Maron, published in 2016 under the title Vor allem eins: Dir selbst sei treu (This Above All: To Thine Own Self Be True). In 2017, in collaboration with author Thomas von Steinaecker, she drew The Summer of Her Life, a poetic graphic novel about Gerda, the resident of a retirement home. Her most recent work is a graphic narrative created in dialogue with Holocaust survivor Emmie Arbel. It was published in 2022 in the acclaimed anthology But I Live: Three Stories of Child Survivors of the Holocaust. In 2016, Yelin was declared 'Best German-language Comics Artist' at the International Comic-Salon, Erlangen, and was nominated for an Eisner Award for Irmina in the following year. She lives and works in Munich.