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'Lord of the Flies' Comes to Television for the First Time in a New Miniseries. In the 1950s, the Now-Famous Novel Almost Never Got Published
Key takeaways
- A new adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies is airing on Netflix for U.S. audiences.
- “It is the book that changed me,” Thorne, who first read Lord of the Flies at age 11, tells NPR’s A Martínez and Ava Pukatch.
- But despite the enduring resonance of Golding’s novel, the tale of Jack, Ralph, Simon and Piggy almost never saw the light of day.
A new adaptation of William Golding’s 1954 novel Lord of the Flies is airing on Netflix for U.S. audiences. The four-part miniseries, written by Jack Thorne and originally aired by BBC, follows a group of schoolboys stranded on a deserted island as their efforts to govern themselves unravel into savagery.
“It is the book that changed me,” Thorne, who first read Lord of the Flies at age 11, tells NPR’s A Martínez and Ava Pukatch. It’s a “specific portrayal of damage that really fascinates me.”
Though Lord of the Flies is set between World War II and the Cold War, the book’s themes—masculinity, loss of innocence, and human nature, to name a few—have transcended time and placed it in the literary and cultural conversation for decades, inspiring authors from Stephen King to Suzanne Collins.