The author of the comic strip "The Arab of the Future", Riad Sattouf, returned to the keys to the success of his autobiographical series on Sunday on Europe 1. For him, who nevertheless defines himself as "Cartesian", this success "seems completely paranormal ", while his stories did not fascinate his interlocutors before being written down on paper.
INTERVIEW
Translated into twenty languages, the autobiographical series
L'Arabe du futur
, the fifth volume of which has just been released, is a major comic book success.
Sunday, in the program
En balade avec
on Europe 1, its author Riad Sattouf returned to the reasons for this success.
"Extremely atheist", "fascinated by the paranormal" and "spiritualism", Riad Sattouf says that he "would have loved to see weird things" in his life, but that "it never happened".
Really never?
"Except once, it is the success of
The Arab of the Future
", he explains at the microphone of Pascale Clark.
"For 35 years, it did not interest anyone"
For Riad Sattouf, this success "seems completely paranormal".
"Because for 35 years, I lived with these stories telling them to a lot of people but they didn't interest anyone."
But that all changed once these stories were transcribed into comics.
"Now I have millions of readers who know my family better than I do and who are moved by the ups and downs," he says.
>> Find all of Pascale Clark's podcast and replay shows here
"Everyone feels a little bit of two cultures"
The "Cartesian" side of the designer, however, pushes him to find other reasons for the success of
The Arab of the Future
.
"The megalomaniac part of me wants to say that it is because it is well told", he estimates at first.
"But there is also another side I think: everyone feels a little bit of two cultures."
In his series, Riad Sattouf indeed evokes the tugging of a child and then of a teenager between his father's Syria and France, a country of freedom to write books.
"When you meet a couple, each has their origin. They can be foreign, but it can be him who comes from Pau and the girl comes from Lyon, each one is there with its specificities", he concludes to explain the attraction of readers for his work.