Adventures on a Desert Island
By Maciej Sieńczyk
Translated by Ewa Lipińska
Published by Centrala, London 2014
270 x 297mm, hardcover, 148 pages, colour
ISBN: 978-0-9929082-2-5
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Adventures on a Desert Island is the first comic book to be nominated and shortlisted for the NIKE Literary Award, the most important and recognised literary award in Poland.
Woken up from a catastrophic dream, a man finds a diary behind his front door and starts to read it. He follows a story of a man who embarked on a cruise to Africa. The ship was sunk by a tsunami but he survived and found himself on a mysterious desert island. The plot is composed of strange stories whose peculiar character is highlighted by the author’s stylised language.
A journey into the unknown provides an opportunity to show the true face of modern man whose life remains unchanged even after a disaster. There is an inherent fallibility to Sieńczyk’s characters, as well as inability and unwillingness to change. Stranded on a desert island, they don’t take any action – they simply recount incredible stories and wait to be carried along by the tides of fate.
'There is nothing that brings to mind Crusoe here, there is no adventurous, exploratory journey into the unknown, despite the signalized genre traits, such as the author’s claim that he has merely found somebody else’s text. ... The points of the subsequent stories are surprising because they are completely unsurprising.'
-- Kinga Dunin
Maciej Sieńczyk (born in 1972) – Polish graphic artist, illustrator, comic book creator. He has worked for major literary and cultural magazines (Lampa, Exklusiv) and is the author of illustrations for several key novels by writers of the young generation (Dorota Masłowska, Michał Witkowski, Adam Widemann).
In 2005, he published his own book, Hydriola, followed by Wrzątkun in 2009 and The Adventures on a Desert Island in 2012. In 2013, he became the first comic book artist to be nominated and shortlisted for the NIKE Literary Award for his album The Adventures on a Desert Island.
Sieńczyk’s work is genuinely multidimensional, pushing the boundaries of traditional comics. His distinctive drawing style along with unusual storytelling create a unique combination of comics and illustration.