When the illustration of stories is adult thing

Illustrated books for adults, with some object book and surprise box, leading to a different reading, is the commitment of the French authors Benjamin Lagame and Sebastién Perez in “Samurais women stories” and “Dorian Gray’s portrait” (Edelvoves), his most recent works in Spanish, which came to present at the Book Fair. Lacombe, A multiple artist, illustrator, writer, editor, has more than two million copies sold. Perezpartner in this adventure, he abandoned mathematics and computer science to move on to a writing that calls to be accompanied by images. We dialogue with them.

Journalist: What led them to recover the tradition of the book enlightened for adults who in the past accompanied “El Quijote de la Mancha” and “The Divine Comedy”?

Benjamin Lacombe: That great tradition has had its stages and changes. The emergence at the end of the 19th century of the illustration of children’s books made the illustration of adult works that in other times had had the extraordinary illustrations of Gustave Doré, Durero and Daumier. Long is the list of great artists who made some form of illustration. I had been illustrating and writing books for boys. In 2009 with “Macabros Tales”, by Edgar Allan Poe, I started in the book illustrated for adults. When I was a boy, those stories had been revelation, they opened to a fantastic universe. A path that I have expanded individually or in society with Sebastien (Perez), in works such as “The portrait of Dorian Gray” and “Samurai Women’s Stories”

Q.: Not only do they recover the tradition of the enlightened book, but intervene in the texts to cause a new reading.

SB: When we work a classic text we look for a way of dialogue with that author who is no longer there. We investigate their correspondence, their manuscripts, their comments in other books, to discover what led to writing that work. And what is hidden behind her. The achieved is in the pages that go after the story. The images are another contribution in that regard, they lead to a more sensory reading, which brings readers, especially to young readers who have moved away from reading. In “Dorian Gray’s portrait” is not only what the illustrations contribute- when he drew Alfred Douglas he thought of Tadeo, the character of Thomas Mann, but even more so that of the film “Death in Venice”- but the investigation that allowed offering the text without the censures that had imposed him, it is told how Wilde’s love story was writer’s grandson. In “La Sernita” we include the never published letters from Andersen to his friend Eduard Collin, and the end that did not dare to publish, offering another way of reading the famous story. In “Frida”, which Sebastien wrote, we seek to show how joining joys and sufferings.

Q.: They join tradition and innovation, was it to take another step, make an absolutely own book that tells seven stories of bold and violent women?

Sebastien Perez: The “Samurai Women’s Stories” are seven destinations. The most famous samurai led an army of three thousand men in a huge battle, and has four lines in the war document “Book of the five rings”. One of those great samurais appears in the famous “Heike Monogatari” epic, but from her husband’s data. That neglecting women of Japanese literature made me become a historian, looking for data and signs and then reconstructing the lives of these women, in a concrete oriental stage, but, at the same time, not losing that world of ghosts, spirits and spectra that is central in Japanese folklore.

Q.: Was the interest in the oriental arose in you for the popularity of manga or by politics?

JL: All creation has a political dimension, because it takes sides or does not take sides. Today the orientalism of Japan, Korea and China have different identities. Japan influenced Europe with its unique culture, with its softpower is at the origin of all cultural movements. South Korea is different. There is a will from the power to be the new cultural United States. They finance culture. They produce books, comics, movies, series, musical groups. As much as the United States worries about this, it has an unstoppable influence. China is power, seeks to establish itself at an ecological, production, science, show power and leave aside an ancient culture.

Q.: How does work happen in common?

SP: The isolation is typical of the writer’s work. We, from the beginning, eighteen years ago, we don’t work like this. Ideas come from one side or the other, in the end we have an idea of ​​text and images. There are ideas that we write together. For the book “The extraordinary Appenzell family” I was inspired by Benjamin’s family, which I know well, and he made me look out in many of his illustrations. I work with other illustrators, and Benjamin with other writers. When I don’t write for Benjamin, I seek the text to inspire the illustrator. The usual thing in those cases is that there are changes, adjustments to the work. That does not happen between us because we work much earlier, even agree on how the book will be, until the text and image dialogue. To this we add the book as an object from the lid, the paper, the decoration, the differences of the interior pages, to the characteristics of the closure. I think that is why we produce totally different books from the usual ones.

Q.: What are they working on now?

BL: Sebastien has just published for boys “The Awakening of the Siren” about war and peaceful coexistence, illustrated by Justin Brax, and a little bigger “Las Brujas de Venice”.

SP: Benjamin has just published two new titles of his “Wonders Encyclopedia”, “The Ghosts” and “Ogras and Ogros”. Not to work, in addition to creations as an illustrator and narrator, he conducts sectors of large publishers such as Albin Michel and Gallimard.