Curtain call! In November 2022, we “celebrated” the 6th and final volume of the series The Arab of the Futurestarted in 2014. Today, it is the turn of Esther, 18, to bow out after nine years of confidences. Esther? The teenager, daughter of a friend of Riad Sattouf, who inspired the Franco-Syrian cartoonist to write his famous biographical comic strip recounting the daily life, from the age of 9 to 18, of a middle school and high school student today. Two series with considerable success. Neither the author nor his publisher, Guillaume Allary, could have imagined that Riad’s autobiographical comic strip, subtitled Youth in the Middle East (1978-2011), would sell, in France alone (it has been translated into 22 languages), some 3.23 million copies; and Esther’s Notebooks to nearly 2 million. The key to success? Perhaps these expressive and clear drawings, born from Sattouf’s desire to draw, like his model, Hergé, for people who don’t read comics. But also and surely this ability to stick to current events and the emotions and hopes of an entire youth, whether binational or Franco-French.
Take this last volume of Notebooks. Esther is in her final year of high school at a posh high school in the capital. Queen Elizabeth II dies, and in Iran, the morality police smash the skull of a poorly veiled girl. Esther may not be passionate about current events, but she is overwhelmed, especially since the baccalaureate looms before her like a wall. “In truth, I am almost certain that I am going to fail everything, my year, the baccalaureate, my life, everything.” And now her big brother is sliding towards the extreme right while her father is a pure Mélenchonist. Not really comfortable in her body, Esther hides in clothes oversize and for her, the troubles pile up: she falls out with her best friend, Cassandre, and still doesn’t have a boyfriend. And then, there’s this discovery of the Shoah with the deportee Esther Senot, survivor of Auschwitz, the memory loss of her grandmother…
But there are also “lighter” moments such as the family vacation in Lapland to go and say hello to Santa Claus or her participation in the demonstration against the pension reform. It’s time for Parcoursup. What to ask for? Finally, Esther chooses the information-communication degree, “the favorite course of study for people who don’t know what to do in life” but which leads to “pretty much everything in fact”. The big day arrives. It’s done! The baccalaureate is in the bag, and the world is starting to look brighter. With “en vrai”, “en mode”, “genre” and “mdr”, Esther’s life flashes by, in a mixture of egocentrism and empathy. Exemplary in many ways… And that’s how the Sattouf-Allary duo also ends, the cartoonist having decided to create his own publishing house after ten years of working together. His own teenage crisis.