Manga Shakespeare: As You Like It
Words by Richard Appignanesi
Art by Chie Kutsuwada
Paperback, 208 pp, £9.99
"…And one man in his time plays many parts." This exciting manga version of Shakespeare's most dazzling comedy of love transports the action to an Oriental world, where the Realpolitik of the post-modern city is transfigured by the timeless truths it meets in the Forest of Ar-Den. One mask is exchanged for another. This is the age-old story: brothers quarrel, boy meets girl, boy becomes man; four weddings, two reconciliations – and a girl who dresses as a boy. Well, each to his own, nobody's perfect, and... as you like it.
As You Like It is part of Manga Shakespeare, a series of graphic novel adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays. Drawing inspiration from trend-setting Japan and using Shakespeare's original texts, this series – adapted by Richard Appignanesi and illustrated by leading manga artists – brings to life the great Bard's words for students, Shakespeare enthusiasts and manga fans.
As You Like It is part of Manga Shakespeare, a series of graphic novel adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays. Drawing inspiration from trend-setting Japan and using Shakespeare's original texts, this series – adapted by Richard Appignanesi and illustrated by leading manga artists – brings to life the great Bard's words for students, Shakespeare enthusiasts and manga fans.
Chie Kutsuwada
Chie Kutsuwada is a Japanese manga artist based in Brighton. A graduate of the Royal College of Art in London, she is the creator of King of a Miniature Garden and Moonlight. She also provided the illustrations for The Book of Five Rings by Musashi Miyamoto and Warrior Kids, a children's book by Mark Robson. Kutsuwada's books are widely available in English and have been translated into several other languages. Aside from her comics work, she regularly leads manga workshops at institutions across the country, including the British Library, the British Museum and various schools.
Richard Appignanesi
Richard Appignanesi is a PhD graduate in classical art history. He was a founder and co-director of the Writers & Readers Publishing Cooperative, and later of Icon Books Ltd, where he served as originating editor of the internationally acclaimed illustrated Beginners and Introducing series, to which he contributed his own bestselling titles, Freud, Postmodernism, Existentialism and others. A former executive editor of the art journal Third Text, reviews editor of Futures and exhibition curator, Richard is the author of the fiction trilogy Italia Perversa, the novel Yukio Mishima’s Report to the Emperor and the Granta title What do Existentialists Believe? For SelfMadeHero, he adapted the texts for the Manga Shakespeare series, as well as The Wolf Man and Hysteria in the Graphic Freud series.
Reviews
"If I have my way, comics will play their part in the literacy debate. My son has no interest in English at school, but has devoured three Manga Shakespeare graphic novels, plus the graphic novel of Kafka's The Trial."
— Ian Rankin
"This series does in book form what film director Baz Luhrmann did on screen – make Shakespeare cool and accessible to a younger generation… [the] artists use the dynamic flow of manga to give Shakespeare's plots an addictive page-turning energy."
— Independent on Sunday