The Secret to Superhuman Strength

The new masterpiece from the bestselling, award-winning graphic novelist and feminist icon, whose fans include Gloria Steinem and Laura Marling

*A GUARDIAN AND OBSERVER 'BOOKS OF 2021' PICK*

From the bestselling, award-winning author of Fun Home

All her life, Alison Bechdel has searched for an elusive secret.

The secret to superhuman strength.

She has looked for it in her favourite books, the lives of her heroes, celibacy, polyamory, activism, therapy, and most obsessively, in her lifelong passion for exercise. Skiing, running, karate, cycling, yoga, weight lifting - you name it, she's tried it. "Oh, to be self-sufficient! Hard as a rock! An island!"

But as she gets older, her body isn't getting any stronger. And in a changing, sometimes overwhelming world, are "cantaloupe-sized guns" all a person needs? Maybe the all-important secret is not where she expected to find it . . .

In this, her third graphic memoir, Alison Bechdel has written a deeply layered, personal story about selfhood, self-sabotage, mortality, addiction, bliss, wonder, and the concerns of a generation. This is an extraordinary, laugh-out-loud chronicle of the conundrums we all grapple with as we seek our true place in the world.

About the Author

Alison Bechdel is the author of the bestselling memoir Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, which was named a Best Book of the Year by Time, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, People among others. For twenty-five years, she wrote and drew the comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, a visual chronicle of modern life - queer and otherwise - considered 'one of the preeminent oeuvres in the comics genre.' Alison Bechdel is guest editor of Best American Comics, 2011, and has drawn comics for Slate, McSweeney's, Entertainment Weekly, Granta , and The New York Times Book Review.

In 2014 she was named as one of the recipients of the MacArthur Foundation Grant.