A page turns. Or, rather, around sixty. The ninth and final volume of “Esther’s Notebooks” by Riad Sattouf, a comic strip which follows a child and then a teenager since she was 10, will appear on June 6, Allary Editions announced this Tuesday, April 16.
This volume will be titled “Stories from my 18th birthday”. The young Parisian will face the horrors of the Terminale: Parcoursup, the baccalaureate and coming of age. In the presentation of the work, Allary announces the color: “Esther is philosophical and a little dizzy at the moment of the big flight, but it will go well, eh, we believe in it…”.
The end of a fruitful collaboration with Allary
It all started with a meeting, in 2014, with the real “Esther”, the daughter of a couple of friends, then in CM1. Riad Sattouf, who was working at that time on his autobiographical series “The Arab of the Future” wanted to tell his adventures in the magazine L’Obs, which at the time offered him a weekly page. Esther in the comic book version (it would later be adapted into a cartoon) was born. After two million copies sold in eight years and as many volumes, the young woman and her adopted father both take the path to emancipation. Once “Histoires de mes 18 ans” is released, the Franco-Syrian author will cease to be published by Allary.
Translated into twenty-three languages and awarded twice with the Fauve d’or for best album at the Angoulême International Comic Strip Festival, Riad Sattouf founded his own publishing house in 2021, Books of the future. This has so far only published one book, “Le Jeune Acteur 1”, the first volume of a biography of the actor Vincent Lacoste.