NEIL GAIMAN

“TROLL
BRIDGE”
Veronika Yakubova, 441
BIOGRAPHY
 1960, England (Director of a family chain of
stores + pharmacist)
 Various church schools: Fonthill School in East
Grinstead, Ardingly College and Whitgift School
in Croydon
 A self-described ‘feral child who was raised in
libraries’
 C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Edgar Allan Poe,
Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, G.K. Chesterton

"Before weddings, bar mitzvahs, funerals and

anything else where you're actually meant to
not be reading, my family would frisk me and
take the book away."
EARLY WRITING CAREER
 Began his writing career in England as a
journalist
 Duran Duran biography
 biography of Douglas Adams, ”Don't Panic:
The Official Hitch Hiker's Guide to the
Galaxy Companion”
 Desire to create comic books for an older
mature audience
 COMIC BOOKS
 Three years of practice in other people's projects

‘Moore's work convinced me that you really could do

work in comics that had the same amount of
intelligence, the same amount of passion, the same
amount of quality that you could put in any other
medium, such as novels, short stories, or films’

 1989 - the first issue of the comic book "Sandman"

appears, published by DC.
 12 volumes Sandman became the first comic ever to
 Warner Brothers` film adaptation receive a literary award, the 1991 World
Fantasy Award for Best Short Story (12 awards
in general)
NOVELS AND SHORT STORIES
 1990 – Good Omens (+ Terry Pratchett)
 1996 – Neverwhere
 1997 – Stardust (children literature)
 2001 – American Gods
FAMILY LIFE
 In March 1985, Gaiman married
McGrath after the birth of their son
Michael in 1983.
 The couple had two more children Holly
and Madeleine.
 In 1992 they moved to US (near
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)
TROLL BRIDGE
Idea: story of Jack who meets troll several times during his life. This troll wants to eat his life,
but Jack manages to escape him several times. Still in the end he comes to the troll and let him
devour his life and experience and himself becomes a troll under the bridge.
Theme:
 Loneliness
 childhood/adult life
 Absence of dreams, love and hope in the life
 Cowardice
 ‘Emptiness’ in the soul