Two famous anticolonial novels turned into comics.
With Heart of Darkness (1899) Joseph Conrad wrote a powerful critique of European colonialism. Conrad especially focused on the exploitation of Congo by the Belgian King Leopold II. Forty years earlier, the Dutch author Multatuli had lambasted the Dutch exploitation of Indonesia with Max Havelaar (1860).
But while Belgium and the Netherlands lie next to each other, the two novels could not be more farther apart. Conrad has written a dense and dark story, full of ambiguities that leave it to the reader to make out what is really going on. Multatuli, on the other hand, wanted to denounce Dutch colonialism and went through great lengths to describe its perversions as clearly as he could.
Can these different approaches to anticolonial storytelling successfully be translated to the format of comic books? And if so, how would such comic books look? Watch this video (in Dutch) for more information on Heart of Darkness and Max Havelaar.
