One immense talent chases another… After the ultra-popular Franco-Syrian Riad Sattouf (author of the autobiographical series in six volumes “The Arab of the Future”), it is the British Posy Simmonds who was awarded, Wednesday January 24, 2024, the Grand Prize of the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
This award, considered the most prestigious in the field, crowns “an original work in the graphic novel”, according to the organizers of the event. It was awarded during an opening ceremony of the Festival.
But the winner, aged 78, was not able to make the trip to the banks of the Charente, as tradition dictates. Its French publisher, however, read a message from the author who said she was “surprised, stunned, but deeply delighted to receive this honor”.
High quality “competition”
It was after a two-round vote (in which all comic book authors published at least once in French took part) that Posy Simmonds won. She was in the running with the Frenchwoman Catherine Meurisse, “beaten” for the fifth time in a row at this stage, and the American Daniel Clowes.
“To my friends and competitors, Catherine Meurisse and Daniel Clowes, whose work I admire: the quality of a race is measured by the value of its competitors,” greeted Posy Simmonds in his message of thanks.
A work that scratches the bourgeoisie
The Englishwoman, already president of the jury of the Angoulême Festival in 2017, is appreciated in the industry for her delicate humor, which can also be grating. Her work is dominated by satire of the bourgeoisie from which she herself comes.
It has nearly thirty titles, including numerous illustrated books for young people. But it is her graphic novels that are famous in France, a country where she did part of her studies and learned to know the codes of comics, and then freed herself from them.
“ Gemma Bovery “, ” Tamara Drewe ” And ” Cassandra Darke » are his three “big” graphic novels.
A retrospective devoted to the work of Posy Simmonds is being held, until April 1, at the Center Pompidou, in Paris.
On display are unpublished drawings, sketches and sketches, notebooks and film extracts, which perfectly illustrate “the gift of observation, the sense of detail, the caustic look at contemporary morals and the world, and the taste for literature” ‘a great Francophile.