In Lånat kön, the Swedish edition of Chloé Cruchaudet’s celebrated graphic novel Mauvais genre, love and identity intertwine against the backdrop of one of history’s darkest periods. The story begins in early twentieth-century France, where Paul and Louise, a young couple deeply in love, are torn apart by the outbreak of World War I.
Their affection seems indestructible, yet the war forces Paul into the trenches, where the brutality of combat shatters both his body and mind. Amidst the suffocating mud and endless shellfire, he witnesses unspeakable horrors, including the gruesome death of his close friend Marcel, whose decapitated body haunts him even after his escape. When Paul can no longer bear the madness, he makes a desperate choice to desert the army, an act punishable by death. With Louise’s unwavering help, he flees to Paris, but safety proves to be another kind of prison. Confined to their small apartment, he lives in constant fear of being discovered, unable to step outside without risking execution.
It is within this suffocating captivity that the idea of transformation is born. One night, restless and craving a sense of normality, Paul disguises himself as a woman to go out for a drink. The disguise, intended as a temporary solution, soon evolves into something far more radical. Louise, terrified for her husband’s safety yet intrigued by the possibilities, helps him refine the illusion. She teaches him how to move, how to speak, how to blend into the world as a woman. They name this new identity Suzanne, a supposed friend of Louise’s, and through Suzanne, Paul finds freedom again. What begins as an act of survival turns into an act of self-discovery. As Suzanne, he ventures out into Paris, a city that pulses with postwar hedonism and the vibrant chaos of the 1920s. For the first time since the war, Paul feels alive. The gender disguise ceases to be a costume and becomes a revelation.
Cruchaudet’s narrative captures these emotional complexities with a masterful blend of tenderness and irony. The war, though present for only a brief part of the book, casts a long shadow. Rendered in stark tones of black and sickly green, those early pages of trench warfare explain everything that follows. The trauma Paul endures in the mud and blood of the frontlines becomes the catalyst for his metamorphosis. His rebirth as Suzanne is as much an escape from the masculine ideals of heroism and virility as it is from the French military police. The war destroys his sense of self, and in rebuilding it, he finds comfort in femininity, performance, and the spaces that defy gender norms. Cruchaudet’s exploration of this theme is subtle and empathetic, never mocking or moralizing. She portrays Paul’s transformation not as a deception but as an awakening, a confrontation with identity that feels startlingly modern despite its historical setting.
Visually, Lånat kön is a triumph. Cruchaudet’s palette is dominated by shades of grey and sepia, evoking both nostalgia and decay. Through this subdued landscape, flashes of red emerge, on lips, fabrics, and emotions, marking moments of passion, danger, or self-realization. The color red becomes the pulse of the story, a symbol of life in a world drained of vitality. The illustrations breathe rhythm into the narrative, their frames often distorted or dissolving as the characters drift further from the norms that once constrained them. Cruchaudet’s brush captures both the claustrophobia of postwar Parisian apartments and the dreamlike allure of the Bois de Boulogne. Her work is at once delicate and bold, infused with humor and melancholy.
When Mauvais genre appeared in France in 2013, it became an instant critical and commercial success. It won both the critics’ prize and the public award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2014, confirming Cruchaudet’s place among the finest contemporary European comic artists. Swedish readers were introduced to the story through Lånat kön, which preserves the delicate irony and emotional depth of the original. Critics such as Caroline Degerfeldt praised it as “strong historical fiction for adults, with outstanding ink and watercolor drawings,” while others, like Ulrika Stahre, highlighted its humor, inventiveness, and vivid portrayal of everyday life.
Beyond its artistic achievements, Lånat kön resonates as a meditation on identity, love, and survival. It challenges the boundaries of gender long before such discussions entered mainstream discourse, showing how deeply human identity can be shaped by trauma, circumstance, and desire. Paul’s transformation into Suzanne is not merely an act of disguise but a form of liberation. In escaping death, he discovers life in a new body and a new social role. Yet Cruchaudet never romanticizes this freedom; she shows its cost in loneliness, in the tension between Paul’s newfound self and Louise’s longing for the man she married. When amnesty for deserters is finally declared, and Paul could, in theory, return to his old life, Suzanne refuses to disappear. The person Paul once was no longer exists. The transformation, once temporary, has become permanent.
In the end, Lånat kön is both a love story and a tragedy, a tale of courage and loss, of laughter and despair. It is a story about how war breaks people and how, in the wreckage, they try to rebuild themselves, sometimes in ways the world is not ready to accept. Chloé Cruchaudet invites readers to look beyond categories of male and female, victim and survivor, normal and deviant, to see instead the fragile beauty of becoming someone new. Through her fluid drawings and layered storytelling, she turns history into poetry and gender into art.
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