End of Esther’s notebooksthe comic strip by Riad Sattouf that tells, year after year, the life of a child and then of a teenager: the young woman has come of age and the author publishes his latest book in the publishing house that has seen his notoriety explode.
This volume 9 published on Thursday, subtitled Stories from my 18th birthday., evokes the last year, that of Parcoursup and high school. Esther will go to university. She celebrated her transition to adulthood with dignity.
For the 46-year-old Franco-Syrian, author of the autobiographical saga The Arab of the future, is the end of ten years of collaboration with Allary editions. “I’m not nostalgic,” this designer, who has reasons not to be, warns in an interview with AFP.
A wonderful adventure
In 2021, he created his own publishing house, Les Livres du futur, where he uses many of the recipes that have made him successful so far: quality paper and printing, flat areas of white and solid colors.
At the time of his departure, the house founded by Guillaume Allary was doing well. He has maintained his independence in a sector in the process of concentration. And his catalogue, with authors such as the philosopher Charles Pépin or the journalist Alexandre Lacroix, is successful.
“This last volume closes a wonderful adventure, so there is a kind of nostalgia, of course, but this announced ending is part of the charm and strength of this series,” Guillaume Allary explained to Livres Hebdo on Tuesday.
weekly page
Esther’s notebooks They have lasted since 2015 at Le Nouvel Obs. The magazine had commissioned a weekly page from Riad Sattouf. And the designer had decided to dedicate it to the adventures of a girl of his friends, then a schoolgirl.
I couldn’t predict that it would work well enough for a television adaptation, and then that pieces of this animated series would be a hit on a social network… that didn’t even exist yet.
“Teenagers were interested in the phenomenon on TikTok. There was an animated series created for Canal+, which was relatively successful. Three years later, it was revived on TikTok, a bit like a pirate, and has had hundreds of views. “Millions of visits!” he is surprised.
The little girl went through adolescence without too many dramas. The readers followed him. “What I liked about this young woman in quotes with no history, that is, neither beautiful nor less beautiful, neither rich nor poor, neither ultra-brilliant nor with problems, is that she was a character opposite to mine in The Arab of the futurehis dysfunctional family, between two origins,” explains Riad Sattouf.
“Famous without being known”
With this sensitive girl who observes her classmates very carefully, were you lucky? To respond, Riad Sattouf quotes Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who stated, to affirm that only style counts: “There are many stories on the street. (…) Each one has a story, a thousand stories.”
“What I’m saying is not modest, I’m sorry, but I think it’s the way it’s told that makes the story interesting,” he says immediately. “And I wasn’t afraid of Esther becoming more or less interesting, because I feel like she could write a comic about anyone. All lives are interesting, depending on the angle you look at it.”
In the last volume, surprise: Esther discovers that she has roots in an Arab country. She was more distant than Riad Sattouf, to the point that she ignored him for a long time.
Esther is not the first name of this young woman who is “famous without being known,” she points out: “I put the character away from her to protect her. She cannot say that her entire life is told.”
He already has a sequel in mind, as he revealed to Le Parisien: “I have a new graphic novel coming out on October 8, a new series. But I won’t say more, it’s top secret!” Meanwhile he publishes “this month” the second volume of young actorhis comic biography of Vincent Lacoste, which he revealed in The beautiful children.
Source: BFM TV
