The books and prints in this exhibition are a series of adaptations of classic novels: Edith Wharton’s Ethan Frome, John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, Jean Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, and Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

The original prose styles of these novels are remarkably diverse, but in common, they are tense, unbearably tragic and poetic. They tell stories of ordinary people, the decisions they make, and the social and political forces that shape their lives. Whilst sorrow runs through each work, more optimistic ideas are woven alongside their darker narratives. It is this balance that makes these novels so distinctive and memorable to me. In Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, the importance of family permeates the narrative. In Rhys’s Good Morning, Midnight, the small, everyday pleasures of a depressed woman provide moments of respite. In Wharton’s Ethan Frome, the search for true love lies at the heart of the story. And in Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, the natural world is rendered in exquisite prose.

Using rules and constraints, I have distilled each novel to reveal a single concentrated and memorable theme. In Wharton’s Ethan Frome, for example, the protagonist’s name is repeated throughout the novella with a mournful insistence. My adaptation amplifies this pattern, transforming the text into a poem of “Ethan”, where only traces of the original drama remain. My recent adaptation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four focuses on Winston Smith’s search for truth. Here, the text is reduced to moments of remembering. Although the complete novel remains visible across facing pages, I have distorted the layout until it becomes illegible—always just beyond the reader’s grasp, just as the truth remains beyond Winston’s. In my adaptation of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles, I have distilled the tragic narrative to leave only Tess’s forward movement through Hardy’s richly drawn landscape.

This exhibition includes a series of print-on-demand publications that retain traces of their source texts through both theme and physical form. Alongside these are a hand-printed, extravagantly leather-bound edition of You Must Have Seen Ethan Frome and its print-on-demand facsimile. The exhibition also features a series of early editions of the original novella, subtly transformed through foil blocking in keeping with my distillation processes.

For more information on Jackie Chettur’s work see: A Novel in Six Parts, Parse 1, can’t eat for that, you can’t eat for that, and Thus Tess Walks On.

This exhibition is open to the public Monday – Friday 9am-5pm. No booking needed. The library is on the first floor of B block. Public parking on meters on main road or at Ashton Court.

For more information on Bower Ashton Library, visitor access and campus map, see the library website.

UWE Bristol, City Campus at Bower Ashton, Kennel Lodge Road, Bristol BS3 2JT.