The study seeks an answer to the question of what issues the comic adaptation of Yuval
Noah Harari’s Sapiens, summarizing the history of humanity, was forced to face due
to the media change. In order to answer this question, the essay first interprets
the narrative structure of the first Sapiens graphic novel (The Birth of Mankind),
establishing that the narrative metalepses confusingly interplay the narrative levels
of the narrators and the narrated characters. Next, the study explores the issue of
the inserts of different genres difficult to place in the narrative structure, which
can also unsettle the reader expecting authentic storytelling („graphic history”).
As an explanation for the procedures used, the study uses the approach of a recently
emerging trend of narratology examining „unnatural” narratives, with the addition
that interpretation strategies based on textual literature are forced to face the
different status of „unnaturalness” in the case of comic book narratives.
