Ulla Donner’s The Natural Comedy is travelling to Poland, where it will be published by Kultura Gniewu.
The Natural Comedy by Ulla Donner has started its journey into the international literary scene as its Polish rights have been acquired by Kultura Gniewu. The deal has been brought to us by our Polish co-agents at Book/lab.
The Natural Comedy has been welcomed with warm reviews in both Finland and Sweden and the title is this year’s winner of the Urhunden Prize, Sweden’s most prestigious prize for comics.
In The Natural Comedy it’s autumn, and the leaves have started to fall. One of them, a leaf called Birch, makes a crash landing on a mushroom, Candy, while en route to the Great Autumn Feast. The unlikely duo start a perilous journey through the forest, or rather what is left of it, trying to make it to the party in time. The Natural Comedy is a playful twist on Dante’s Divine Comedy from the perspective of the creatures of a forest that has been destroyed by humans’ exploitation.
As Birch and Candy make their way through the destroyed forest in Dantean fashion, they roam through artificially modified natural reserves, coming across the ancient, grimy Mother Nature, a wellness cult headed by a Kombucha mushroom, as well as other woodland dwellers forced to adapt to their new habitats.
The characters of the graphic adventure are like urban people: harmony-loving Birch swears by positivity and self-acceptance, woke Candy is committed to improving the world, but only on the terms of its own comfort, and patriotic Slime Mold has its mind set on doggedly pushing through the rock, despite going round it would save years of travelling.
The Natural Comedy is the third work of Ulla Donner, winner of the Finlandia Comics Prize for Best Graphic Novel in 2020. The sylvan fairytale grows into a hilarious satire about the Finns’ “special” relationship with nature. It is a tale about a society in which nature is subordinate to the human pursuit of profit and in which heaven and hell are only separated by how well each species manages to fit around people’s needs. The author also touches on xenophobia, comical features of young people’s dating rituals, and the societal terror of old age and hagsploitation in her characteristically wry manner.
Kultura Gniewu is a Polish publishing house specialised in comics for children and adults. They are the Polish home of, among others, Daniel Clowes, Guy Delisle, Robert Crumb, Ivan Brun, and Shaun Tan.
In Finland, The Natural Comedy is published by Schildts & Söderströms.
Warm congratulations to the author and the publishers!