HUGO PRATT
Corto Maltese The Secret Rose

The Secret Rose, is the ninth of the twelve titles of Corto Maltese that narrate the adventures of the romantic sailor created by Hugo Pratt in 1967 and now published by IDW Publisher in the USA.

Available since February 2019

Corto Maltese’s adventure this time is indeed highly surreal and dreamlike and is packed with references to a mythological background that changes according to the varied actions that involve the Holy Grail, Death, the Devil, the Sandman and others. There is a whole range of strange characters pitted against Corto, who is finally acquitted at the end of a long (and very amusing) debate.

In this episode Pratt makes Corto Maltese drink from the “source of the Alchemy Rose” thus giving him a sort of eternal youth, a key for the initiatory passage to a spiritual imaginative world.

The writer Herman Hesse, who Corto Maltese met in Montagnola in 1924, is a character who is directly connected to the content of this story thanks to his novel “Klingsor’s Last Summer”. Another real figure is Tamara Lempicka, a very talented artist who was famous not only for her portraits, but also for her beauty. Rasputin and Corto’s friend Professor Steiner also appears.

IDW Publishing, San Diego. CA
9.25” x 11.625” Trade Paperback, 80pp.
ISBN: 978-1684054022
$19.99

More:
http://euro.idwpublishing.com/product/corto-maltese-the-secret-rose/