When you’re an alien, what better language is there to get to know our race than sex? This can cause some problems if you take the shape of a flower. However, interspecies relationships do not scare this perennial plant which tender young Mélanie is given by her gardener father, and which leads her from conquest to conquest. This is the story of this strange creature that Cadelo has imagined, an astonishing fable which takes on the appearance of a fairy tale to teach us about some of the realities of life.

Thus reads the back cover text of Silvio Cadelo’s La fleur amoureuse (The Lover Flower), the most complex and beautiful of his sexually-themed bandes dessinées. Part science fiction, part sexual fantasy, part coming-of-age exploration, La fleur amoureuse deserves careful reading at several levels, not to mention recognising Cadelo’s mastery of the comic strip format, his use of colour and composition, and the humour implicit in much of the narrative. It starts with a disembodied voice calling to Mélanie across space and time and ends with her pregnant with all the potential of a new world. A joy of a book.

La fleur amoureuse was published by Delcourt Erotix.