Dr Juha Virtanen, a lecturer in contemporary literature in the School of English, responds to the inclusion of a graphic novel on the Man Booker Prize longlist for the first time.
‘The inclusion of Nick Drasno’s Sabrina in the Man Booker Prize longlist is something to be applauded. There have been a number of precedents that have paved the way to the announcement today. For instance, Art Spiegelman’s Maus receiving a Pulitzer in 1992, Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth winning the Guardian First Book Award in 2001, and Alison Bechdel being one of the recipients of the MacArthur Fellows grant in 2014.
‘Nevertheless, this has still been a long time coming: it is 22 years ago that – in 1996 – Samuel R. Delany posited that comics and graphic novels are – or were at the time – culturally dismissed because they are seen as an “art form for the young children and adolescents of the working class”.
‘Throughout their publication history, we have seen a multitude of graphic novels that challenge and disprove the questionable politics and misconceptions behind such dismissals, and in that respect the news today marks an important step towards undoing such cultural biases once and for all.
‘Hopefully this will mean more graphic novels are included in future longlists for prizes such as the Man Booker, and that such lists will eventually be able to more fully reflect the excellent, challenging, and innovative work found in graphic novels.’
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