Six years after its publication, the best-seller of Nicolas Mathieu, Their children after them (Actes Sud), Goncourt Prize 2018, is back in the news and sees its sales double – according to the publishers – thanks to Ludovic et Zoran Boukhermathe two twin brothers behind its film adaptation in theaters on December 4.
With a budget of 12 million euros and a hand-picked cast of excellence – Gilles Lellouche, Ludivine Sagnier in particular – the film has been, since the announcement of its release, highly anticipated. Premiered at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, its leading actor Paul Kircherdiscovered in The High School Student of Christophe Honoré et The Animal Kingdom of Thomas Cailleywon the Marcello Mastroianni prize for Best Newcomer.
If we add to this significant means of promotion – ensured in particular by Warner Bros, Discovery France, Canal + and France Télévisions – this promised from the start a record number of entries, in line with Love phew by Gilles Lellouche and Comte de Monte Cristo of Alexandre de La Patellière et Matthew Delaporte released this year, a success at the national box office and also the fruit of an adaptation.
More than 700,000 copies sold
An unsurprising triumph given the notoriety of the book, sold since its publication in 2018 in more than 700,000 copies according to GFK and reprinted around ten times – including this fall in 20,000 copies – according to Actes Sud, contacted by Weekly Books.
On November 13, the publisher also published a pocket version of the novel with the film poster as cover, with a print run of 20,000 copies with an initial release of 15,000.
Their children after them immerses the reader and viewer in Eastern France in the 1990s, a geographical area neglected by the rest of the metropolis, where former workers are suffering the full brunt of deindustrialization. It is in this poverty-stricken environment that Anthony, the main character and a fourteen-year-old teenager, lives, who is completely bored. One hot afternoon, he meets a girl his age, Stéphanie, whom he joins at a party the same evening by borrowing his father's motorcycle. When the next morning the motorcycle disappears, the young boy's life is instantly turned upside down.
