The One Hundred Nights of Hero
A Graphic Novel
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4.9 • 13 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
In the tradition of The Arabian Nights, a beautifully illustrated tapestry of folk tales and myths about the secret legacy of female storytellers in an imagined medieval world.
In the Empire of Migdal Bavel, Cherry is married to Jerome, a wicked man who makes a diabolical wager with his friend Manfred: if Manfred can seduce Cherry in one hundred nights, he can have his castle -- and Cherry.
But what Jerome doesn't know is that Cherry is in love with her maid Hero. The two women hatch a plan: Hero, a member of the League of Secret Story Tellers, will distract Manfred by regaling him with a mesmerizing tale each night for 100 nights, keeping him at bay. Those tales are beautifully depicted here, touching on themes of love and betrayal and loyalty and madness.
As intricate and richly imagined as the works of Chris Ware, and leavened with a dry wit that rivals Kate Beaton's in Hark! A Vagrant, Isabel Greenberg's One Hundred Nights of Hero will capture readers' hearts and minds, taking them through a magical medieval world.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Greenberg's haunting first graphic novel, The Encyclopedia of Early Earth, made her an instant critical darling. In her follow-up, she returns to Early Earth, a three-mooned world of myth and magical realism, for a collection of feminist stories about "bad husbands and murderous wives and mad gods and brave women who don't take shit from anyone." In a frame story borrowed from The Thousand and One Nights, two women hold off a rapacious man by telling stories within stories, usually about other women getting themselves in and out of danger. Greenberg combines elements from fairy tales, children's books, and folklore from around the world to create an original but teasingly familiar mythos. Above all, it's a book about the power of storytelling, populating Early Earth with a secret society of storytellers, a grove of memory trees, and women treasuring literacy in defiance of a stern bird god. Greenberg's primitive woodcut-style illustrations suggest folk art from another planet.
