Manga Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Hamlet published by SelfMadeHero is a reinterpretation of Shakespeare's classic play in manga form. In this manga, Hamlet is set in a dramatic futuristic world. A great earthquake has divided our planet into separate colonies. The state of Denmark has grown prosperous and defended itself successfully against neighbouring states. But could it be that its greatest threat comes not from without, but from within the state itself? It is in this cyber world that we find the young Hamlet. His grief over his father's death turns to something far darker when the ghost of his father appears to him. Hamlet is very soon to discover that something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

Title:- Hamlet
Original author William Shakespeare
Adapted by Richard Appignanesi
Illustrated by Emma Vicieli
208 pages, paperback
Publication date 1st March 2007
Published by SelfMadeHero
Fiction. Price £6.99
Colour: 8 colour, 200 black and white
ISBN: (10 digit) 0-9552856-1-5
(13 digit) 978-0-9552856-1-5

The book is one of the first full length manga book commissions in the UK using a UK manga artist, along with SelfMadeHero Manga Shakespeare title Romeo and Juliet which is also published on the 1st March.

Editorial style

The series keeps true to the text of Shakespeare, but is specially abridged for use in the manga.

Notes for editors:

Editorial Team

Publisher Emma Hayley is the Director of SelfMadeHero, which is an imprint of Metro Media Ltd, based in central London. Emma has a background in magazine journalism and film PR. She worked as editorial manager for publishers Hobsons and Arcturus before setting up Metro Media with her business partner Jenny Ross four years ago.

Richard Appignanesi- Series Editor /Adapter

Richard Appignanesi graduated with a doctorate in classical art history. He was a founder and co-director of the Writers and Readers Publishing Co-operative and Icon Books where he originated the internationally acclaimed 'Introducing..' series. His own best selling titles written for that series include Freud, Postmodernism, and Existentialism. He is the author of the fiction trilogy Italia Perversa (Stalin's Orphans, The Mosque, and Destroying America) and the recent novel Yukio Mishima's report to the Emperor. He has served as curator of art exhibitions, university lecturer, and conference organiser for the British Council. He is currently associate editor of the art and culture journal Third Text and reviews editor of the policy and futures studies journal Futures. What do Existentialists Believe? In the new Granta series,2006, is his most recent book.

Nick de Somogyi - Textual Consultant

Nick de Somogyi was educated at Dulwich College and Pembroke College Cambridge, where he gained his doctorate, and now works as a freelance writer and researcher, as a genealogist at the College of Arms, and as a contributing editor to New Theatre Quarterly. He is the founding editor of the Globe Quartos series, and was the visiting curator at Shakespeare's Globe 2003-6. His publications include Shakespeare's Theatre of War(1998), Jokermen and Thieves: Bob Dylan and the Ballad Tradition (1986), and as editor The Little Book of Ware Poems(1999), and (from 2001) the Shakespeare Folios series for Nick Hern Books. His work has included contributions to the Open University (1995) and Carlton Television (2000), BBC Radio 3 and Radio 4, and the National Portrait Gallery (2006).

Illustrator
Emma Vicieli is a key member of the UK manga collective, Sweatdrop Studios. She is a keen promoter of the UK manga and anime scene and enjoys offering workshops and seminars on creating manga as well as being a freelance illustrator and manga ka. Her professional experience ranges from 'How to draw manga books' through corporate character designs to artwork for table top RPG card games. She is producing her own series Dragon Heir, and has appeared in a number of group anthologies. Her articles and artwork have appeared in several magazines and she was one of winners of the first Tokyopop Rising Stars of Manga UK and Ireland competition.

Series Overview
Future SelfMadeHero titles will include The Tempest and Richard III (Autumn 2007), with plans to publish Othello, Much Ado About Nothing and A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Alongside Manga Shakespeare, SelfMadeHero will launch its Classical Eye series later this year, featuring other classics in graphic novel form. The first titles include The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, adapted by Andrzej Klimowski and Danusia Schejbal, and Kafka's The Trial, adapted by David Zane Mairowitz and Chantal Montellier. Other titles planned include Edgar Allan Poe's Nevermore, The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment.

Manga Shakepeare

Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
(both published March 1 2007)

The Tempest
Richard III
(both published Autumn 2007)

Othello
Much Ado About Nothing
A Midsummer Night's Dream
(Series editor: Richard Appignanesi; Textual consultant: Nick de Somogyi.)

Classical Eye
The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov
Nevermore - Edgar Allan Poe
The Trial - Franz Kafka
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson