Richard Appignanesi (; December 20, 1940 – April 8, 2025) was a Canadian writer and editor. He was the originating editor of the internationally successful illustrated '' For Beginners'' book series (since 1991 called the '' Introducing...'' series), as well as the author of several of the series' texts. He was a founding publisher and editor of Icon Books."About Icon,"
Icon Books website. Accessed Jan. 11, 2015. He was founding editor of the Manga Shakespeare series.Johnson-Woods, Toni, editor. ''An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives'', Bloomsbury Academic (London, 2010). pp. 267-280. He was an executive editor of the journal ''

Third Text ''Third Text'' is a leading peer-reviewed academic journal covering art in a global context. After founder and editor Rasheed Araeen's earlier art magazine ''Black Phoenix'', which started in 1978 and published only three issues, ''Third Text' ...

'', and reviews editor of the policy studies journal ''

Futures Futures may mean: Finance *Futures contract, a tradable financial derivatives contract *Futures exchange, a financial market where futures contracts are traded *''Modern Trader'', formerly Futures, an American finance magazine Music * ''Futures' ...

''."Richard Appignanesi,"
Granta Books website. Accessed Jan. 11, 2015. Appignanesi authored four novels, a graphic novel, a variety of graphic texts, a volume of poetry, monographs and essays on cultural and literary subjects, and curated several projects.

Education

Appignanesi was born in

Montreal Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...

, Canada, of Italian parents. He distinguished himself in music at an early age when, in 1953, he was an ''E. Archambault Pour Mérite'' gold medal finalist and obtained a music scholarship at the Montreal Conservatory. He graduated with an Honors BA in English Literature in 1962 from Loyola College, Montreal. He traveled to England in 1967 and, in 1973, completed a D.Phil. in Art History from the

University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...

: ''The Origins of Art Criticism in the Classical Greek and Later Phases of Antiquity''.''Stalin's Orphans'', Quartet Books (London, 1985), book jacket. In the early 1990s he did biographical research on the Portuguese poet,

Fernando Pessoa Fernando António Nogueira de Seabra Pessoa (; ; 13 June 1888 – 30 November 1935) was a Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, and publisher. He has been described as one of the most significant literary figures of the 20th c ...

, at King's College, London.

Personal life

In 1967 he married the writer Lisa Appignanesi (née Borensztejn) with whom he had one son, filmmaker Josh Appignanesi; the couple divorced in 1984."About,"
Lisa Appignanesi official website. Accessed Jan. 10, 2015. He also had a son, Raphael, and a daughter, Rosa, with different partners. He lived in

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, England.''Yukio Mishima's Report to the Emperor'', Sinclair-Stevenson (London, 2002), book jacket. He died on April 8, 2025.

Editing and publishing

In 1974, Appignanesi co-founded the Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative, Ltd. in London with a group of writers that included

John Berger John Peter Berger ( ; 5 November 1926 – 2 January 2017) was an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet. His novel '' G.'' won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism '' Ways of Seeing'', written as an accompaniment to t ...

Arnold Wesker Sir Arnold Wesker (24 May 1932 – 12 April 2016) was an English dramatist. He was the author of 50 plays, four volumes of short stories, two volumes of essays, much journalism and a book on the subject, a children's book, some poetry, and ot ...

, Lisa Appignanesi, Chris Searle and Glenn Thompson. In 1976, Appignanesi translated into English and published Mexican cartoonist

Rius Eduardo Humberto del Río García (June 20, 1934 – August 8, 2017), better known by his pen name Rius, was a Mexican intellectual, political cartoonist and writer born in Zamora, Michoacán, Zamora, Michoacán. One of the most popular Mexican ...

' ''Marx para Principiantes'' with the English title ''Marx for Beginners''. The book's instant popularity prompted the development of the cooperative's international '' ...For Beginners'' series of illustrated documentary books, Writers and Readers' most ambitious undertaking. With Appignanesi as originating storyboard editor, the series was considered very successful,"History,"
Introducing Books website. Accessed Jan. 12, 2015. with translations into 16 languages and sales of well over a million copies; it earned Appignanesi a Directors Club (New York) Merit Award for art direction in 1980.Richard Appignanesi,"
Library Thing. Accessed Jan. 12, 2015.Pallister, David, ''How two words can form an argument'' ''The Guardian'' (May 21, 1994), p29. The cooperative disbanded in 1984. In 1991, together with Peter Pugh and Jeremy Cox, Appignanesi co-founded and became director of Icon Books Ltd., where he continued his originating editorship of the original illustrated ''...For Beginners'' books, but now re-titled the '' Introducing..'' series. Under that imprint, the series as of 2014 had expanded to include some 100 titles of illustrated texts on sophisticated topics in the areas of philosophy, politics, science and the arts. Independently and separately, Glenn Thompson of the original Writers and Readers relaunched ''...For Beginners'' in 1992 under the name For Beginners, LLC. In 2007, Appignanesi undertook a project explicitly targeting a youthful audience. The series, '' Manga Shakespeare'', consists of Appignanesi's adaptations of several (14 as of 2014) of Shakespeare's plays in which the storyboards are created using selected but direct, unaltered quotations from the original texts, with illustrations by prominent UK-based

manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...

artists.

Writing

Illustrated texts (as author)

Appignanesi authored texts in collaboration with various illustrators. He has been called a "master of the graphic translation of complex cultural ideas"Poynor, Rick
"The Woman Who Took on the Wolf Man,"
''Eye Magazine'' #83 (2012). ''The Wolf Man: Graphic Freud'' is an illustrated narrative of one of

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( ; ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies seen as originating fro ...

's most famous case studies and founding text of modern

psychoanalysis PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: and is a set of theories and techniques of research to discover unconscious mind, unconscious processes and their influence on conscious mind, conscious thought, emotion and behaviour. Based on The Inte ...

. Appignanesi's text is accompanied by the work of graphic artist Slawa Harasymowicz. In the Beginner/Introducing series, Appignanesi wrote and edited ''Lenin for Beginners/Introducing Lenin'', ''Freud for Beginners/Introducing Freud'' and ''Introducing Existentialism'', all three titles illustrated by Oscar Zarate. ''Postmodernism for Beginners/Introducing Postmodernism'' and ''Introducing Learning and Memory'' were co-authored with

Ziauddin Sardar Ziauddin Sardar (; born 31 October 1951) is a British-Pakistani scholar, award-winning writer, cultural critic and public intellectual who specialises in Muslim thought, the future of Islam, futurology Critique of modernity, postmodernism an ...

."Our Books: Introducing,"
Icon Books website. Accessed Jan. 10, 2015.

Novels

Appignanesi wrote four novels, the first three of which were published as a fiction trilogy, ''Italia Perversa'', consisting of the novels ''Stalin's Orphans'', ''The Mosque'', and ''Destroying America'', originally drafted in 1967, saw light in the early 1980s. The trilogy is epic in the scale of its locations –

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

Zagreb Zagreb ( ) is the capital (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Croatia#List of cities and towns, largest city of Croatia. It is in the Northern Croatia, north of the country, along the Sava river, at the southern slopes of the ...

, Italy while its Quebecois protagonist's travels are ultimately fated to ominous disillusionment through his separatist terrorism. However, Appignanesi's demanding and highly literate prose, in contrast to the generally well received approachable style of the illustrated texts, produced ambivalent reviews. It has been described as "A tour of twentieth century European culture with inescapable echoes of Musil, Svevo and

Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of real ...

... A fretful, nervous brilliance playing over much of the book a piece of infinite fascination, the sort of novel which, for all its faults, jerks us out of our provincialism." And "Literary devices and ambitions almost bury this 1967 saga... ut..discussions are interesting and Mr. Appignanesi's descriptive skills are considerable." Almost two decades later Appignanesi published ''Yukio Mishima's Report to the Emperor'', a fictional autobiography of the Japanese poet, novelist, playwright, film director, actor and bodybuilder

Yukio Mishima Kimitake Hiraoka ( , ''Hiraoka Kimitake''; 14 January 192525 November 1970), known by his pen name Yukio Mishima ( , ''Mishima Yukio''), was a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor, model, Shintoist, Ultranationalism (Japan), ultranationalis ...

(1925–1970), one of the most important Japanese literary and artistic figures of the 20th century as well as an extreme-right activist. Appignanesi's novel is set predominantly in post-World War II reconstruction Japan and in

Benares Varanasi (, also Benares, Banaras ) or Kashi, is a city on the Ganges, Ganges river in North India, northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hinduism, Hindu world.* * * * The city ...

, India. Its narrative builds up to Mishima's horrific ritual suicide by

seppuku , also known as , is a form of Japanese ritualistic suicide by disembowelment. It was originally reserved for samurai in their code of honor, but was also practiced by other Japanese people during the Shōwa era (particularly officers near ...

that accompanied his failed right-wing coup against the Japanese government. The novel explores some of the more malignant recesses of Japanese society and culture. Its tone is one of a dark magical realism and the protagonist's journey traverses a variety of grotesque and horrific, yet often lyrically rendered landscapes. Penny Mountain, in the UK trade journal ''The Bookseller'', wrote, "This formidable literary achievement ��In this fictional autobiography, Appignanesi . . . imagines in macabre, shocking and often comic detail the life and suicide of the extraordinary Japanese writer…"Mountain, Penny. ''The Bookseller'' (8 February 2002).

Monographs

''What Do Existentialists Believe?'' is an introduction to

existentialism Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and valu ...

through a series of "

thought experiments A thought experiment is an imaginary scenario that is meant to elucidate or test an argument or theory. It is often an experiment that would be hard, impossible, or unethical to actually perform. It can also be an abstract hypothetical that is ...

" about what it means to view our being human existentially. It traces the history of an existential approach to the question of

being Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one do ...

through major thinkers such as

Søren Kierkegaard Søren Aabye Kierkegaard ( , ; ; 5 May 1813 – 11 November 1855) was a Danes, Danish theologian, philosopher, poet, social critic, and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical tex ...

Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (, ; ; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary criticism, literary critic, considered a leading figure in 20th ...

and

Albert Camus Albert Camus ( ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, journalist, world federalist, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the s ...

.''What Do Existentialists Believe?'' ''Granta'' (London, 2009), back cover. ''Axis Enigma'',Act 3, ''Endgames'', Pluto Press (London, 1997). is a comparative study of Fassbinder,

Mishima Mishima may refer to: Places * Mishima, Fukushima, a town in Fukushima Prefecture * Mishima, Kagoshima, a village in Kagoshima Prefecture * Mishima, Niigata, a town in Niigata Prefecture * Mishima, Shizuoka, a city in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japa ...

and

Pasolini Pier Paolo Pasolini (; 5 March 1922 – 2 November 1975) was an Italian poet, film director, writer, actor and playwright. He is considered one of the defining public intellectuals in 20th-century Italian history, influential both as an artist ...

, three tragically gifted writers from defeated Fascist countries, linked by a common "axis," the aesthetic of sadism.

Poetry

A volume of poetry, ''The Street to Damascus'', was published in 1972.

Curatorships

Appignanesi co-curated with Juliet Steyn ''Pretext: Heteronyms'', a Rear Window art exhibition of 21 artists responding to

's heteronymic personae, at Clink Street Studios, in London, in 1995. The exhibition, retitled ''Heteronymous'', transferred in 1997 to the Palazzo San Michele a Ripa in

Rome Rome (Italian language, Italian and , ) is the capital city and most populated (municipality) of Italy. It is also the administrative centre of the Lazio Regions of Italy, region and of the Metropolitan City of Rome. A special named with 2, ...

. It was co-curated by Appignanesi, Juliet Steyn,

Achille Bonito Oliva Achille Bonito Oliva (born 1939) is an Italian art critic and historian of contemporary art. Since 1968 he has taught history of contemporary art at La Sapienza, the university of Rome. He has written extensively on contemporary art and contemp ...

, and Anna Maria Nassisi. The exhibition staged Appignanesi's play, ''Fernando Pessoa: the Man Who Never Was'', directed by Marcello Sambati. Appignanesi was program co-curator of the Writing Europe conference for the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

Kyiv Kyiv, also Kiev, is the capital and most populous List of cities in Ukraine, city of Ukraine. Located in the north-central part of the country, it straddles both sides of the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2022, its population was 2, ...

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

, in 2005. He curated the art exhibition, ''Encounters in Relational Geography: Dust, Ashes, Residua'', featuring seven East European artists, at Open Space, Zentrum für Kunstprojekte, in Vienna, in 2010. He presented another version of this exhibition, ''Raising Dust: Encounters in Relational Geography'', with ten artists, at Calvert 22 Gallery, in London, in 2010 – 2011. He was also co-curator, with Haim Bresheeth and Ali Nobil Ahmad, of a program of film exhibitions and related lectures, ''Winds of Change: Cinema in Muslim Societies'', organized by Third Text and the Institute of Contemporary arts, London, in 2011.

Bibliography

Novels * ''The Street to Damascus'' (Covent Garden Press, London, 1972) — poems * ''Italia Perversa'' (Quartet Books, London 1985–1986) — fiction trilogy ** ''Stalin's Orphans'' ** ''The Mosque'' ** ''Destroying America'' Monographs, Essays * ''Axis: Fassbinder, Mishima, Pasolini,'' (Radius, London, 1989) * ''Yukio Mishima's Report to the Emperor'' (Sinclair-Stevenson, London, 2002) — a novel * ''Forgetting September 11: Yukio Mishima, Terrorism and American Innocence'' (Icon Books, London, 2005) * ''What Do Existentialists Believe?'' (Granta Books, London, 2006) * ''Beyond Cultural Diversity: The Case for Creativity'' (Asia Art Archive, London, 2010) — editor Illustrated Texts * '' Introducing...'' series ** ''Introducing Learning and Memory'' (Icon Books, 1998) — with

and Ralph Edney ** ''Introducing Lenin and the Russian Revolution'' (Icon Books, London, 2000) — illustrated by Oscar Zarate ** ''Introducing Existentialism'' (Icon Books, London, 2001) — illustrated by Oscar Zarate ** ''Introducing Postmodernism'' (Totem Books, 2005) — with Ziauddin Sardar and Patrick Curry; illustrated by Chris Garratt ** ''Introducing Freud'' (Icon Books, London, 2007) — illustrated by Oscar Zarate * ''Graphic Freud: The Wolf Man'' ( SelfMadeHero, London, 2012) — illustrated by Sława Harasymowicz * ''Graphic Freud: Hysteria'' (SelfMadeHero, London, 2015) — illustrated by Oscar Zarate

References

External links

Icon Books

Appignanesi, Harasymowicz and others discuss the ''Wolf Man''

Manga Shakespeare: ''Julius Caesar'', digital edition
{{DEFAULTSORT:Appignanesi, Richard Canadian male novelists 1940 births 2025 deaths 20th-century Canadian male writers 20th-century Canadian novelists 20th-century Canadian poets 21st-century Canadian male writers 21st-century Canadian novelists Alumni of the University of Sussex Canadian editors Canadian male non-fiction writers Canadian male poets Canadian non-fiction writers Canadian people of Italian descent Loyola College (Montreal) alumni Poets from Montreal Novelists from Montreal