Of course flowers can‘t speak but they do tell stories about their appearance, their discoverer, their healing or toxic features or about how they came into this world. However, they don‘t deliver this knowledge directly. You have to take a closer look at their names, read between the lines of canonical literature and art. In Isabel Kranz‘s picture-wordbook the tradition of the Language of Flowers lives on: it accredits some blommos with symbolic power and lays down the rules how flowers should function as secret tokens for love notes. Kranz isn‘t only focussing on the erotic aspects of flowers. In her illuminating essays she interprets classic novels as well as a reknown Kevin Spacey movie, a sketch by Monty Python, botanical tractates from 1800 or the latest bestselling romantic novels. Historical references reveal the hitherto unknown beauty of botanical description language.
Sample translation
Complete Italian translation available
French sample translation available
Isabel Kranz, born 1977 in Berlin, is a literary scholar. Her research areas are the relation of literature and botany, the theory of the detail and Walter Benjamin.
"With Speaking Flowers, Berlin literary scholar Isabel Kranz presents a compendium of plant language that is both illustrious and gorgeously illustrated. Her book is not a natural history museum, but a chamber of wonders and echoes." Florain Werner, Deutschlandradio Kultur
