Summary: My recent book Five Wounds (Allen & Unwin, 2010) is subtitled ‘An Illuminated Novel’ and is jointly credited to myself (as writer and art director) and Dan Hallett (as illustrator). Why ‘an illuminated novel’ rather than simply ‘an illustrated novel’? Because in Five Wounds the text, the illustrations and the design are not separate elements, created by isolated individuals who never communicate with one another. Every layout has been conceived of as an integrated whole and executed collaboratively. The phrase, ‘an illuminated novel’ alludes to the ‘illuminated books’ of William Blake, as well as to the medieval tradition of manuscript illumination. I’ll talk about how Five Wounds draws upon the history of the book, and about some of the difficulties involved in such an elaborate production. See http://www.fivewoundsthenovel.com for more information, including videos that showcase the book’s unique format. Jonathan Walker was educated at the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. His interests include card games, photography, comic books, cinema and contemporary music, along with the history of Venice, which he has studied, researched, lectured and written on for more than ten years. In the process, he has published many articles in academic journals on topics such as gambling and espionage. From 2000-2002, he held a prestigious British Academy Post-doctoral Fellowship at Cambridge. In 2003, he moved to Australia to take up a fellowship at the University of Sydney, where he was promoted to a position as Senior International Research Fellow in 2006.
