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      • True stories: discovery / historical / scientific
        September 2020

        The Lost Collection

        by Pauline Baer de Perignon

        Paintings by Monet, Degas, and Renoir… Imagine a magnificent family collection mysteriously vanishing during WWII! The narrator, Pauline, knows from family rumours that one of her great-grandfathers, Jules Strauss, was an art collector. A considerable aura has grown up around this figure. Despite his unfailing eye, he sold his acquisitions too soon. One day, a distant cousin hands Pauline a scribbled list of the paintings that once belonged to Strauss. There is no trace of these pieces in the family apartment. Where are they now? What happened in 1942? Pauline, a homemaker looking for a subject for a book, is no art historian. But, driven by insatiable curiosity that soon borders on obsession, she develops a passion for these missing paintings. Her search takes her from the Louvre to a museum in Dresden, via Gestapo archives.

      • True stories: discovery / historical / scientific
        August 2020

        The Tailor of Relizane

        by Olivia Elkaim

        “Algeria, 1958: my grandfather was Jewish and a tailor by trade. He had to give up everything.” When someone knocks at Marcel’s door in the middle of the night, he fears for his life and those of his wife and children. A bag is pulled over his head, he is bundled into a truck and driven into the desert. Will he be killed or released? Three days later, he returns to Relizane safe and sound. His family wonder what his safe return means. What forfeit has he paid and who to? His wife Viviane, his brothers, mother and neighbours all question him. But he says nothing. When a young Arab apprentice turns up outside his shop, Marcel realises that sooner or later he will have to leave his country. But even in France, where he makes a new life for himself, he never gives up the wild hope of returning to his shop in Relizane…

      • Biography: arts & entertainment
        January 2021

        The One and Only

        Maria Casarès

        by Anne Plantagenet

        The little-known story of Maria Casarès, a Spanish exile in France, actress, free spirit and Albert Camus’s lover. With her monstrous appetite, raucous laugh and scorching sensuality, Maria Casarès was born and grew up in Galicia, fled Franco in 1936, and came to Paris at 14. She very soon wanted to learn the unforgiving French language, become an actress, express herself physically, dance, love… Nothing could stop her, not rejection from the Conservatoire, nor Paris etiquette. Her talent swiftly earned recognition, and she became one of the greatest tragedians of the second half of the Twentieth Century. She was also Albert Camus’ “One and only”. They had a sixteen-year relationship, a tormented love kept in the shadows, but it flourished through a fascinating correspondence.

      • Biography & True Stories
        November 2020

        Woman Doctor

        A Specialist in Infectious Diseases in the Time of Corona

        by Karine Lacombe and Fiamma Luzzati

        What is daily life like in a hospital during the coronavirus crisis? A ground-breaking graphic documentary. Karine Lacombe, a doctor, opens the doors to her infectious diseases department in one of the largest hospitals in Paris as it confronts a virus no one there had seen under a microscope: Covid-19. How do you prepare for this battle? How do you run the department? What surprises does daily life have in store? Does it make a difference if you’re a woman doctor? Thanks to Fiamma Luzzati’s clear, spontaneous draughtsmanship, we follow Karine Lacombe’s thoughts and her experiences working in a hospital under tremendous pressure. The perfect incarnation of an educational and informative graphic reportage that puts the Coronavirus crisis in perspective.

      • True stories of heroism, endurance & survival
        May 2020

        Stalin's Mountaineers

        by Cédric Gras

        The unpublished story of the Abalakov brothers, two mountaineers working for the glory of the Soviet regime. Vitali and Evgeni were Siberian orphans who enjoyed rock climbing before becoming expert mountaineers. They carried out many expeditions between Caucasus and Central Asia, culminating in the 1930s with their ascents of the impressive “Stalin Peak” and “Lenin Peak” in the name of power. In a culture where mountaineering was dictated by the ideology of a new world, by conquering new territories and war, Vitali Abalakov would still become a victim of the Great Terror and the purges in 1938. He was eventually released. Despite having lost several fingers to a high-altitude snowstorm, he returned to mountaineering and achieved elite status again, heading up Spartak. His brother Evgeni meanwhile was found dead in 1948 when he was preparing to climb Everest.

      • Biography & True Stories
        February 2020

        In Siberia's Prisons

        by Yoann Barbereau

        Midnight Express in Siberia. A gripping contemporary story of escape. “The scene unfolds not far from Lake Baikal, where I live and love and am lucky enough to be loved, in Irkutsk, the capital of eastern Siberia. It’s morning, men in balaclavas appear out of nowhere. My daughter screams. She’s five years old. I’m arrested right in front of her, then beaten – expertly – and interrogated. Worst of all I’m branded with that ignominious word I struggle to commit to paper: paedophile. These men hidden behind balaclavas and shadows want my skin. They have set in motion an implacable and brutish process of destruction that has a name, a name I know, invented by the KGB: Kompromat.” Inside Siberia’s prisons, I try to understand. In the psychiatric hospital where I’m later interned, I try to understand. I’m guaranteed fifteen years of a gruelling camp. The story of my escapes can begin.

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