LES OMBRES

A graphic novel about flight, exile and the question of belonging.

A harshly lit interrogation room. A chair, a desk. In this spare, bleak setting, Refugee n° 214's fate is being sealed. After a long and difficult journey, head hanging, back bent, he is applying for asylum. Forced to confess, he must, in order to obtain the precious paper, expose his past and the reasons that forced him into exile. He and his sister had no choice but to flee, as bloodthirsty horsemen pillaged and burned their homeland. Terrified and lost, they crossed forests, deserts, cities and seas: a veritable odyssey filled with mysterious and terrifying people, from the capitalist ogre to the snake-passer, from the dangerously alluring sirens to those shivering, omnipresent shadows, like voices from the beyond. A child describes the days of wandering that shaped his exile, the tragic events that dictated his flight, and the mirages that helped him hang on. With Les Ombres, Vincent Zabus and Hippolyte offer us a subtle, dreamlike and insightful contemporary fable about exile and refugees. Vincent Zabus was born in 1971 and currently lives in Belgium. Actor and artistic director of the Compagnie des Bonimenteurs, he is a serious fan of comic books. He wrote two shorts strips for Spirou, then two series for children published by Dupuis: Le monde selon François (The World According to François) with Renaud Collin and Agathe Saugrenu (Unexpected Agath) with Valérie Vernay. His latest books are Les petites gens (Little People, Lombard, 2012) and Les Chroniques d'un maladroit sentimental (Chronicles of a Sentimental Klutz, Vents d'Ouest). Hippolyte was born in 1976. Having started out working for the press, and then for publishers, he is best-known for having taken on the huge task of producing a comic-book version of The Master of Ballantrae, Robert Louis Stevenson's masterpiece (Denoël Graphic). In 2004, he won the Best Album of the Year Award at the Brussels Book Fair for his comic-book adaptation of Dracula, by Bram Stoker (Glénat). A peerless, and tirelessly inventive graphic designer, he switches happily from scratchboards to water color. He lives on Reunion Island.