Quotations from german reviews:

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: German readers of this book will easily become jealous, because there is a nation which after four hundred years has an illustrator, great enough to match the greatest playwright.

Elle: David Hughes has a mind that matches Shakespeare's in many ways. His creations are taken from true life, they are so real that there was no english publisher for this book. In a way this is like a knighthood.

Süddeutsche Zeitung: A work of genius seducing all senses. "I do not understand people who do not drink", David Hughes says. After looking at his book we do understand him, and a lot about this world.

Der Spiegel: This production - because it takes Shakespeare seriously - is crude, violent and beautiful, a terrific version of "Othello".

ZDF Second German National Television: A wonderful masterpiece, different but as good as the play.

The making of Othello Why David Hughes' »Othello« is published by a german publisher

We first met David Hughes in 1994. Walker Books had published his children's book »Bully« which we were to publish in Germany. Because of the subject of the book, violence among children, we invited David to introduce »Bully« to our sales people. In 1995 we met again because David had received the one and only german Award for children´s literature for »Bully«.

We wanted to publish more of his books, but there were none. He was full of ideas but could not find a british publisher for his picture books for children.
We did not give up easily and offered to become his original publisher. In 1996 we published David's picture book »Little Robert« Neither he nore us could find a british (or american) publisher for a book which was praised by the german reviewers as "not only a book for children but a piece of art as well."
In 1996 we also published a version of Kafka's »Report for an Academy« with full colour pictures by the italian painter Andrea Di Gennaro. This book was not only a huge success with the media, it also sold very well.

We wanted to continue publishing picture books with well known stories for an adult readership (You may compare this to taking a piece of prose and transform this into a movie / a ballet / an opera = by using a different artistic language it becomes a work of its own).

And we wanted to continue working with David Hughes. Since there is hardly any money in picture books for children, especially when neither artist nor originating publisher can expect international coproductions, it seem to be a natural idea to suggest an "adult" picture book to David because he was / is good enough for any kind of readership.
He and us should use the chance not only to produce a wonderful book but also to make some money with it. There was a story which fitted his style and character: Othello.
I suggested this to him on the phone and I must have sounded quite convincing. I told David how much money Andrea Di Gennaro earned from the Kafka book, but I also told him, why I thought »Othello« is the perfect story for him.
It was still 1996 when the contract was signed and David started working.
He himself has written beautifully about the creation of the book so there is little to add to this:
We met on several occasions in London.
The drawings and paintings came before any text.
All drawings used in the book are first drafts. None was re-drawn, colours were added to most of them otherwise they remained unchanged.
The number of original drawings which David did not include in the book is very very small.
The style, the size of the book, the number of drawings, all these are entirely David's decisions.
David wrote the complete text. As far as I known he had never done this before, except for two children's picture books.
In the beginning of 1998 David suggested that we should work with designers, we agreed and he asked the people at The Chase in Manchester. They agreed most willingly and did a very good job.
»Othello« is the most ambitious project we ever started (maybe with this one exception: Eight years ago we published a book containing interviews with jewish Concentration Camp survivors who lived / still live in Germany. This book is yet untranslated) and it was important for us that we knew from a very early stage that there would be a book club edition and media coverage by DER SPIEGEL and national television.

And the original english edition? We tried to convince many british publishing houses to dare an english edition. None of them wanted to do this. You can distinguish two groups:

a) the bluntly disinterested ones (the huge majority)
b) a much smaller group of those who glimpsed at the artwork and said "This is very good but not our style".

I will never forget the young editor at Faber and Faber who told us that they were not publishing comics and I should ask for advice from the comics book shop next to the British Museum.
Distribution: We approached Art Data and Turnaround. This was weeks ago and even after frequent telephone calls from Frankfurt we could not get any kind of answer from them (My assistant will call you tomorrow / We need one more week /never a call or a letter or a fax from them).
This is why we published the original english version. And this is why we had to organize distribution.