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Manga Shakespeare: Macbeth

Words by Richard Appignanesi

Art by Robert Deas

Paperback, 208 pp, £9.99

"All hail, Macbeth, that shalt be king hereafter!" With that misleading prophecy, three witches plant the seed of criminal ambition in the warlord Macbeth. Spurred on by Lady Macbeth, his wife, he embarks on a killing spree of former friends and rivals, until a final confrontation when he realizes too late that the witches have deceived him. In this version of Shakespeare's tale of murder and the supernatural, samurai warriors have reclaimed a future post-nuclear world of mutants.

Macbeth 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.


Robert Deas


Robert Deas is an award-winning UK comic artist and the creator of FAWN and TROY TRAILBLAZER, both of which appear in the comic The Phoenix. The graphic novel Troy Trailblazer and the Horde Queen was the winner of the 2016 Stan Lee Excelsior Award Junior, voted for by young readers from over 200 schools across the UK. Robert’s early career was characterised by a string of graphic novel adaptations of literary classics such as Macbeth and Pride & Prejudice for SelfMadeHero. Other clients include Disney, IDW, The Book Trust, Rubicon Canada and First Media. He lives in Lincolnshire, UK.

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