The narrative of the project was one that occurred by accident, he said, but a number of odd things had happened.

That was just one of many very strange coincidences, and sort of odd things that happened along the way. The paper mill we used burned down, for example, which was quite difficult to deal with.” The shop, an Oxfam in Swansea, south Wales, piled up its many copies of the book and placed a sign on them reading: “You could give us another Da Vinci Code … but we would rather have your vinyl! We urgently need more records to help keep our customers happy … and make more money for Oxfam.” Some of the limited edition books will be available for sale at Oxfam Books & Music, Swansea, during the weekend starting October 28, with remaining copies sold online after the event. Shrigley said that the process of pulping the books to form something new was a “very direct reference” to the Ministry of Truth, the workplace of protagonist Winston Smith whose job involves rewriting historical documents.A total of 1,250 editions of Nineteen Eighty-Four have been made from the unwanted copies of The Da Vinci Code. There will be free hourly screenings of the documentary at Swansea’s Volcano Theatre during the launch weekend. He says a series of “strange coincidences” linked the project to Orwell’s novel and the narrative "sort of happened by accident." Shrigley, regarded as one of the UK’s most consistently funny and perceptive visual artists, came up with the idea after seeing newspaper reports in 2017 about a charity shop pleading for no more copies of the wildly popular Dan Brown novel.

That was just one of many very strange coincidences and sort of odd things that happened along the way. I mean, George Orwell, I think, always intended it to be a warning, it wasn’t necessarily a parable of an existing state, but it was kind of a warning of what can happen when we don’t value our democracy.I can do it because nobody wants to buy The Da Vinci Code any more – they just want to deposit it. So that for me is a project about: ‘Wake up! We are sleepwalking into a totalitarian regime!’” Getting a book designer involved,” he said. “It turned out that the book designer’s grandfather proofread the original Nineteen Eighty-Four and then his sister actually proofread this version of it. The artist said that Pulped Fiction is “certainly not a piece of literary criticism” and mentioned that both of the books “presented themselves” to him “in different ways, for different reasons”. Each book in the edition has been signed and numbered by Shrigley and fragments of the original novels remain on the paper.

George Orwell, I think, always intended it to be a warning,” he said. “It wasn’t necessarily a parable of an existing state, but it was kind of a warning of what can happen when we don’t value our democracy. Discussing his plan with the Guardian in 2021, Shrigley said, with a hint of mischief: “I’ve acquired 5,000 copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, and I’m pulping them all. Then I’m making paper with it and on that paper I’m reprinting an edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell.