Man in Furs

By Catherine Sauvat and Anne Simon, translated by Mercedes Claire Gilliom. Published by Fantagraphics. 

Hardcover, 128 pages, 2-Colour, 2021. 

A graphic biography of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the author whose name came to define the tendency to derive pleasure, especially sexual gratification, from one's own pain or humiliation.

In 1870, Leopold von Sacher-Masoch published Venus in Furs, an erotic novel revealing the author's desire to be dominated by a woman. (And paid homage in the classic Velvet Underground song of the same name.) After the novel's success, a woman turns up at his doorstep and offers to take on the role in Sacher-Masoch's real life. He completely submits to her, and they get married. Years later, Leopold has remarried and lives a quiet life, far removed from the sexual escapades of his first marriage. Then he learns that his surname, to his detriment, has come to describe a new sexual perversion: masochism. Man In Furs is his story.

This compelling graphic biography is a collaboration between the biographer Catherine Sauvat and the celebrated cartoonist Anne Simon. Simon's gentle cartooning perfectly complements Sauvat's empathetic script.

"A loving and lovely consideration of one of history's influential sex-scene scribes." — Publishers Weekly