Story of my 18th birthdaywhich comes out in bookstores on Thursday, marks the end of the chronicle of a contemporary teenager imagined by the author of The Arab of the future.
“I was very lucky that there was this comic about my life and that people were so interested in it, whereas, uh, well it’s just my life”observes the protagonist of the series by Riad Sattouf, Esther’s Notebooks, the last volume of which appears on Thursday. More than two million copies sold for the first eight parts, translated into 10 languages, an animated series, 700 million views on Tiktok…. The figures surrounding the chronicle of a teenager from her 10 years to her majority are quite dizzying.
Esther is now 18 years old. Between disappointments in love, depression, first fears about the future, complicated friendships, the young girl enters adulthood, marked by doubts and questioning.“Like I always dreamed of this moment, and in fact now that it’s happened I feel guilty, and almost regret it?” she philosophizes.
Read alsoThe comic box – Les Cahiers d’Esther by Riad Sattouf or the dizziness of adolescence at full throttle!
At the origin of this saga, a simple dinner with a couple of friends and their 9-year-old daughter, one evening in 2014. She begins to talk about her daily life. In the mind of the author of The Secret Life of Young People germinates the desire to transform these everyday stories into comic strips. The Notebooks of Esther appear in The Obs before being published in albums by Allary Éditions.
Fine observer
Girlfriends, lovers, the attacks of 2015, entry into middle school, high school, the arrival of the little brother, acne, covid, the war in Ukraine, the baccalaureate, discomfort… The The reader follows the small and big worries of a young contemporary girl. The saga is both a testimony and a social chronicle, faithful to the clever balance of drama and humor which irrigates all of the author’s work. Riad Sattouf accurately captures the torments, the joys, the sorrows, the concerns of a generation whose adults ignore the codes.
“If the best ethnologist in the world spends a few years among the Inuit, he will describe in detail their languages, their rites, their fishing techniques, but what will he say about the little 15-year-old Inuit guy who is tired of being cold during endless winters, who doesn’t know why they live in this village, who dreams on social networks of going elsewhere…? This experience cannot be expressed through scientific work, it must be told in order to exist.», Explains the designer in a press release.
With Esther, Riad Sattouf allows young people to identify and feel less alone. And for parents, perceiving the world from a teenager’s perspective, to connect (or reconnect) to their offspring. Everyone wins. Riad Sattouf’s curiosity for this world, Esther’s virtuosity and bite will remain in the annals of comics.
