While not exactly truthful in its self-description, this was a very interesting read, lightly touching on heavy subjects and providing a window into science history we might not have looked through before. Yes, this is a bit cheeky in saying it looks at Freud's final days, when it is actually covering much more than a decade – the final years of his time, from when he first realised his incessant cigar smoking had given him mouth cancer. None of the friends he calls peers are able to admit that's what's wrong, at first, saying it's all A-Okay and a simple slice or two will get rid of it, but from when the obvious is unavoidable to the end, Freud was looked after by a patient wife, Anna his daughter, and a new personal physician he initially scoffed at for lack of experience, Max Schur.

Not only that but we have the obvious parallel cancer of Nazism and the Anschluss to cover, but the benefits of this as a read are evident to anyone who's suffered through one of the "chubby, hmmm…" kind of exposition-heavy biographies the graphic novel format normally lumps us with. I had expected this to be a wordy screed of people telling Freud what he knows, and what he said and did, in order to tell us what he knows and said and did. There's barely a sniff of that, beyond one sign that Freud prefaced the Nazis with a book about a specific psychological type.

And the visuals go some way to making this a surprisingly quick read, as they convey the passing years via the obvious metaphor of the shrinking cigar stub, try their best to portray the lesions and the pain of the treatments, and cover everything else. Sometimes the text is a simple sentence of caption in the middle of the page, and while some spreads are more verbose some are less wordy. Making a virtue of the watercolour style, I think we get something distinctive enough for this book in the way of conveying the disease, as well as enough character, décor and architecture to see this as a real thing that was playing out much less than a century ago.

Nothing was laboured here, not a bit of it over-stayed its welcome or lectured us too greatly. It is certainly a book the general browse would be all the better for experiencing – you don't need to be a professor of this kind of stuff to get a lot from this. Layman friendly, visually assured and most readable, this is probably four and a half stars.

I was a psychology minor in my undergraduate college education, and I worked in a psych hospital in the seventies, when Freudian psychotherapy was already waning in its influence. On the other hand, has anyone in the history of psychology ever approached his influence on an understanding of the world, especially the way we think of the past as a way of understanding identity? Did we even have a sense of what identity entailed before Freud? I think therefor I am , Descartes wrote. And Socrates famously said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And now in the age of memoir we are examining away! I certainly have a few of his books here, most of them ones he wrote later in life. You can try to dismiss him for various things, looking back (ha!) but you can't deny that he had useful things to say to shape contemporary thinking.

This book, Through Clouds of Smoke: Freud's Last Days, is not about any of Freud's main ideas. I think it is written for students of Freud who already know his work. Otherwise, why would you care about an old psychologist in th last years of his life? I thought maybe it was because 1) of the irony that he was in denial about the causes of his cancer, his refusal to change, his smoking of cigars (and yes, I can't resist: Sometimes a cigar is not only a cigar; sometimes it is a suicide weapon. Why else keep smoking as you endure more than thirty surgeries on your
mouth?). But again, who except Freudians would care about a narcissistic (check!) old man so stupid as to keep smoking himself to death when he knew it was killing him?! Most people would just say: He thought he was so smart, but he was finally as stupid as anyone else refusing to acknowledge dangers, another denialist?

The other interesting sort of "poetic" point of the book is that Freud fought two cancers/wars: 1) Mouth cancer (and who among his contemporary thinkers used his mouth to articulate ideas? Irony?), that deteriorated his jaw, and 2) the cancer of and war against Nazism. His work was denounced by Hitler and Nazi Germany, as was "decadent" art of the period. They burned his books as all fascists do! But we don't go into that connection too deeply.

As a once student of Freud I sort of enjoyed this book though thought the focus on his smoking and cancer went on longer than necessary. I might have liked some greater mention of his ideas so a general reader might care about death.. This book was thoughtfully and well-illustrated. I liked it, but found it a curious artifact in some ways. Congrats to the authors for taking this one aspect of his life and focusing on it. Contemporary students of Freud may be grateful.

This graphic biography considers Freud narrowly through his love of cigars. I love this premise. As Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” But don’t you want to know what was up with the doctor’s cigars? Briefly, it’s mentioned that the doctor saw smoking as a substitute for masturbation; smoking cigars kept him productive. Yet it’s also what killed him. The doctor seemed to know that the tobacco was giving him cancer. The illustrations show his near-torturous commitment to smoking. Freud’s cancer got worse as he fled Austria and Nazi persecution; the cancer in his mouth contrasts with the cancer in Europe. I found this biographical comic to be fascinatingly told and perfectly illustrated. There are even endnotes and a bibliography for a rigorously researched comic. If you’re interested in Freud or philosophy, you'll enjoy this short read. One can always expect a quality from Humanoids.

On a lark, I requested an eARC of this graphic novel from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The description sounded interesting; I thought that this would be a comic exploring the final years of Sigmund Freud, who was a fascinating historical person. I was looking forward to getting some insights into the man, but I was disappointed. The dialogue was stilted at best. None of the characters talked like real people, and I’ve gained no insights into who Freud was as a person. The art was interesting, but I found the lettering to be frustrating to read. I would suggest that you skip this one.

This graphic novel is a bit outside my typical interest areas, but I'm glad I picked it up. In broad strokes, it chronicles the last decade or so of Sigmund Freud's life, touching on his stubborn refusals to quit the cigars that he knows are killing him (ironic, given his "death drive" theory) and the rise Nazism and World War II.

I'm not always keen on history for my pleasure-reading, but the author makes the excellent choice of going small and specific with the narrative. Instead of learning about the large-scale impact of Sigmund Freud's work or the worldwide upheaval of the Nazi annexation of Austria, this novel zooms in on the human scale - focusing on Freud, his family, and his personal physicians.

I was also very fond of the art. To my untrained eye, it appears to consist of watercolor painting - which makes every panel a true work of art. There are depictions of Freud's dreams, splashes of red to interrupt the otherwise grayscale palette, and other creative choices to add visual interest to the largely static "action" of Freud's navigation of various late-in-life challenges.

I recommend this to anyone with even a casual interest in Freud (I came to the novel with only a basic understanding of his contributions, from passing references in my college coursework). I'd also recommend this to readers like myself who may be apprehensive about historical reading. The artwork and the human-scale stakes to world events made this an engaging read.

#ThroughCloudsofSmokeFreudsFinalDays #NetGalley

This is a very dark graphic novel about the last days of Dr. Freud, and the metaphorical cancer spreading across Europe. The book is beautifully done, but it is a terrifying read. The graphic novel has footnotes and the information for each footnote is well worth reading. An excellent book and very eye opening. An especially engaging read and very, very highly recommended.

I was so curious to read this graphic novel because I study Psycology and I wanted to see how in this aspect Freud would be narrated. First off I really don't like Freud even though I appreciate some of his works but thid didn't stop me to enjoy tge reading. I rezlly love how the drawing would narrate the story all,the aspetti of the disease and the pain I liked so much these panels they were so raw it seems lite the artist sbarcherà the photos for the prosthesis. In this story we see the last years of Freud and i could learn more of him amd his realationship with smoke where of course in school I couldn't learn so i really liked to learn more about him. And seeing his moments of despair but zt the sarebbe time remaining his trueself even during the war. He was a unique character and with this novel I could see it more and appreciate him more.