Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman | 1978 | William Kotzwinkle | Buy |
Herr Nightingale and the Satin Woman appeared in 1978, years before the term “graphic novel” had become standard, and it occupies a slightly unusual place in Kotzwinkle’s bibliography as a result. The book is a full collaboration with illustrator Joe Servello, with text and image working together throughout rather than the illustrations simply decorating a prose narrative. It runs to 119 pages and was published by Knopf in a format that reflected its ambition.
The story draws on pulp noir and fantasy, featuring a cast that includes animals and speaking insects alongside human characters, in a world that follows its own dream logic. Critics and readers who have discovered it tend to describe it as ahead of its time, a book that anticipated what the graphic novel would eventually become as a form without quite fitting into any genre category that existed when it was published.
For collectors and readers interested in Kotzwinkle’s range, it is one of his more distinctive artifacts: a book that could only have been made in collaboration and that exists in a form he has not returned to since. The work was influential enough that it was adapted into both a play and a musical, which suggests its imaginative material had a life beyond the page.