Lord of the Flies at 70: how a classic was reimagined as a graphic novel

Dutch illustrator Aimée de Jongh talks about turning William Golding’s haunting novel into a visual artwork, while the author’s daughter and others reflect on its evolving message of humanityLike many Dutch teenagers – like many teenagers, full stop – Aimée de Jongh first read Lord of the Flies at school. She was 14 and in an English lesson when she found herself irresistibly drawn to this ostensibly rather British book about a group of schoolboys marooned on a remote Pacific island after a plane crash. “Fourteen is an interesting age,” she says. “I was still a kid, but I thought of myself as an adult. What I liked was their independence. They were free. They had no parents to tell them what to do.” She found that she could easily picture the world William Golding had created, for all that she’d “never been anywhere hotter than Italy”. It was a matter then, as now, of contrasts. “It’s set on a brightly coloured tropical island, like [the 1980 film] The Blue Lagoon or something. But the boys are wild and dirty. They’re a bit animalistic: they have long hair, they’re running around. They’re dark.” The book became her favourite novel and has remained so ever since.Ten years ago, De Jongh, a cartoonist, illustrator and animator, was casting around for an idea for her first book. “I’d done a comic strip in a newspaper and I wanted to move on to graphic novels,” she tells me. “But I was scared. I’d never written a book before, and I thought: ‘Maybe an adaptation is a good way... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2024-08-25 13:00:02 UTC ]
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