Irmina

Barbara Yelin’s Irmina, a 2016 graphic novel from SelfMadeHero, follows the titular German woman from her ambitious youth in 1930s London through her gradual, compromising return to Nazi-era Berlin. Based on Yelin’s own grandmother’s letters, the story examines how a bright, independent individual becomes complicit in a horrifying regime—not through malice, but through silence, privilege, and the small choices of daily life. Yelin’s watercolor art, with its muted palette and expressive faces, deepens this quiet, devastating portrait of moral failure and the personal cost of resistance. A powerful and nuanced work, it stands as a vital contribution to the graphic memoir genre.