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You are here: Home / Culture / Books / 1984: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is a necessary adaptation of Orwell’s classic

1984: THE GRAPHIC NOVEL is a necessary adaptation of Orwell’s classic

November 17, 2021 Category: Books, Reviews
1984: The Graphic Novel
1984: The Graphic Novel
George Orwell’s 1984: The Graphic Novel, Matyáš Namai
George Orwell’s 1984: The Graphic Novel, Matyáš Namai

If there’s a more vital text than Orwell’s 62-year-old masterpiece, then I don’t know what it is. If you have a passing interest in dystopia, pop culture or just the western world, it’s an essential read. But with a text so well constructed and so endlessly aped, the idea of an adaptation into a graphic novel could beg the question of whether this approach could illustrate anything we haven’t already read in the original.

RELATED: ‘Courttia Newland’s Cosmogramma is an excellent collection of short stories illustrated via animalistic observations of humanity.’

The answer: a definitive yes. Matyáš Namai’s fantastic images bring a dreadful immediacy to Orwell’s words. Rendered in black and white with flashes of lipstick, jam and the inevitable blood (Namai allows only red to be smeared across his packed pages), the beauty of the naked form – so unwelcome in Orwell’s world – is countered by the violence of thought and words: there’s no way of hiding from these images and no way of ignoring the truth in what you see. When reading words, the mind sometimes hides from the image, like Winston’s convictions fleeing in fear from the Thought Police.

In the end, of course, in Room 101, there really is nowhere to hide. As long as 1984 is forever relevant, adaptations will be always necessary.

George Orwell’s 1984: The Graphic Novel, Matyáš Namai (Palazzo)

Price: £16.99. Info: here

words JOHN-PAUL DAVIES

KEEP READING: ‘Sammy Wright’s book Fit casts a grim but absorbing view into young, contemporary Britain with mixed levels of detail.’

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About Noel Gardner

Noel is the listings, reviews, music and books editor at Buzz and has been doing some or all of these things here since the days of dial-up internet. He was raised in Cornwall, lives in Cardiff and that is more or less all he has ever known.
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Tag: 1984, buzz book review, buzz graphic novel review, George Orwell, john-paul davies, Matyáš Namai, Palazzo

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