Blue is the Warmest Color

By Julie Maroh; Translation by Ivanka Hahnenberger

Originally published in French as Le bleu est une couleur chaude, Blue is the Warmest Color is a graphic novel about growing up, falling in love, and coming out.

Clementine is a junior in high school who seems average enough: she has friends, family, and the romantic attention of the boys in her school. When her openly gay best friend takes her out on the town, she wanders into a lesbian bar where she encounters Emma: a punkish, confident girl with blue hair. Their attraction is instant and electric, and Clementine find herself in a relationship that will test her friends, parents, and her own ideas about herself and her identity.

Vividly illustrated and beautifully told, Blue Is the Warmest Color is a brilliant, bittersweet, full-color graphic novel about the elusive, reckless magic of love. It is a lesbian love story that crackles with the energy of youth, rebellion, and desire.

First published in French by Glenat, the book has won several awards, including the Audience Prize at the Angouleme International Comics Festival, Europe's largest.

The live-action, French-language film version of Blue Is the Warmest Color won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2013. Directed by Abdellatif Kechiche and starring Lea Seydoux and Adele Exarchopoulos, the film generated wide praise as well as controversy for its explicit scenes. It opened in the fall of 2013 through Sundance Selects/IFC Films (USA) and Mongrel Media (Canada) as well as other countries around the world, including the UK and Ireland (Artificial Eye) and Australia (Transmission Films). It was named best foreign-language film by the New York Film Critics Circle and the Los Angeles Film Critics Circle.

*Watch the trailer for the 2013 film adaptation...

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Arsenal Pulp Press (Aug. 2013)
ISBN-13: 9781551525143
Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 18.4 x 26 cm