The genre of the graphic novel, where the plot is told mostly with the help of sketches, not the text, became popular in West Europe and the US in the end of the 20th century. Unlike comics, it is mostly targeted at the adult readership. In Ukraine this genre has been scarcely known until recently. However, recently Leopol Publishing House presented the first graphic adaptation of the classical piece of Ukrainian literature.
Ivan Franko’s novelette Hero Against Will has been given a new life. It tells about a clerk Stepan Kalynovych, who gets into the whirl of revolutionary events of 1848. The readers will see Lviv of the period of Austrian Empire with street clashes between Poles and Austrians. “In this publication we tried to reveal the potential of Ukrainian literature in a new way,” says the author of the adaptation Kyrylo Horishny. “The text has been somewhat modernized and shortened – the descriptions were substituted by sketches. At the same time we tried to preserve Ivan Franko’s original language.” The illustrations for the publication were created by Mikhai Tymoshenko.
