George Orwell is back, and he’s in graphic novel form! An illustrated biography of his remarkable life has hit bookshops at about the same time as a similarly pictorial treatment of his magnum opus, 1984. David Nobakht has leafed through both.
Pierre Christin [illustrated by Sébastien Verdier] (SelfMadeHero)
Not one but two graphic novels in relation to radical socialist journalist George Orwell have just been published, and though seemingly unrelated in their conception are both impressive works, and unsurprisingly complementary. Orwell, written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Sébastien Verdier, is a biography from graphic novel specialists SelfMadeHero, and not an adaptation which can be devoured in just a couple of brief reading sessions. Christin and Verdier have left no stone unturned: the writing is forensically descriptive and the many illustrations are rich in atmospheric detail.
The son of a civil servant who worked in the opium department of the colonial government in Bengal, Eric Blair – later to adopt the pen name George Orwell – was born in India in 1903. Not long after, Blair moved back to Britain with his mother and sisters; his father remained in India until he retired in 1912. It was quite a solitary time for Orwell, who took comfort from reading H.G. Wells books and the menagerie of family pets and in nature itself. All was quite tranquil until the day arrived when Blair was reluctantly and abruptly packed off to boarding school on reduced fees, something he was later bullied about.
We are less than 20 pages in and Blair’s questioning and rebellious character is starting to develop – accurately and thrillingly narrated within the pages of Orwell. The teachers treat pupils accepted on reduced fees with condescending resentment; despite this, Blair passes the entrance exam to Eton. Quotes from the adult Orwell, taken from later interviews where he looked back on his life, are dotted throughout these pages, including a mention of the horrendous prep school he was packed off to burning down.
George Orwell [illustrated by Fido Nesti] (Penguin)
Despite his Etonian background, Blair chose to join Burma’s Imperial Police rather than studying at Oxford. Whilst travelling to Burma by ship, Orwell witnessed a Petty Officer “scurrying like a rat along the side of the deck-houses with … a half-eaten baked custard pudding … from the passengers’ tables.” This experience taught Blair more than he could have learned from “a dozen socialist pamphlets.” Orwell did not last long in his new position: repulsed by having to shoot a rampaging elephant, and rampant imperialism more generally, he returned to Britain penniless and started writing.
Naming himself George, after the patron saint of England, and Orwell after the river he loved to fish in, his time in Burma inspired 1934 debut novel Burmese Days. Preceding it was his travelogue/memoir Down And Out In Paris And London, published in 1933 and depicting the poverty Orwell experienced on returning to Britain. Orwell as a whole is a fitting and intricate visual reading experience that tells, from birth to death, the story of a great cultural journalist and his everlasting influence. It is a cliché to write this in a book review, but this graphic novel was damn hard to put down.
Surprisingly, this is the first time that Orwell’s 1984 has been given the graphic novel treatment. Brazilian illustrator Fido Nesti has done a grand job of depicting Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, with main character Winston Smith cannily resembling Orwell himself. Smith works in the Record Department of the Ministry Of Truth, where he rewrites and whitewashes the past to promote the totalitarian nature and propaganda of the Party for which he has little respect.
Smith’s secret love interest Julia is the only character who radiates any beauty, with the other characters appearing worn down by the ugliness of oppression. Nesti’s use of colour, limited to various shades of red and black throughout, is highly effective, adding coldness and bleakness to the novel’s tense claustrophobia that builds to a harrowing climax. Many of 1984’s coinages – newspeak, doublethink, Big Brother – have not only slipped into the global English vernacular.
1984 was originally published in 1949, a year before George Orwell’s untimely death at just 46 years old. The writer himself, you like to think, would have been most proud of this new graphic interpretation – which, like the previously mentioned Orwell, takes absolutely no shortcuts.
Orwell. Price: £14.99. Info: here
1984: The Graphic Novel. Price: £20. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
