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Manga Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet

Words by Richard Appignanesi

Art by Sonia Leong

Paperback, 208 pp, £9.99

"My only love sprung from my only hate," laments Juliet, the heroine of Romeo and Juliet, the world's most famous love story. A fusion of classic Shakespeare with manga visuals, this is a cutting-edge adaptation that will impassion and grip its readers. Set in modern-day Japan, two young lovers are caught up in a bitter vendetta between their rival Yakuza families – the Montagues and the Capulets. Can their forbidden love survive as violence, betrayal and tragedy explode on the streets of Tokyo?

Romeo and Juliet 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.


Sonia Leong


Sonia Leong won Tokyopop's Rising Stars of Manga competition in 2005 and went on to illustrate Domo: The Manga (Tokyopop), Bravest Warriors: The Search For Catbug (VIZ/Perfect Square) and the Eisner Award-winning Comic Book Tattoo (Image). Leong is also the author of a number of how-to-draw titles, including Draw Manga: 101 Top Tips from Professional Manga Artists and Manga Your World. As a freelancer, she has worked on projects for Toyota, CNN, the BBC and Marie Claire, among many others.

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