As Riad Sattouf’s six-volume autobiographical epic concluded at the end of November 2022, The Arab of the future, started in 2014 and sold more than 3.5 million copies worldwide, another adventure was coming to an end. With the exception of the last albums of Notebooks of Esther, the other saga of the same Riad Sattouf which will end when its young heroine has reached 18 years old, Allary Editions will no longer publish the most popular comic book author in France, who has just been crowned by the Grand Angouleme price.
His desire for independence led him to found his own publishing house in September 2021, Les Livres du futur. This dream of autonomy, which he shared until then with his publisher, Guillaume Allary, ended up separating them. In very good terms, they assure one and the other. “I understand his desire for emancipation; the freedom of authors is so important to me that I cannot oppose it”, says the publisher. Reached by email, Riad Sattouf also speaks graciously of his ally of twenty years: “His main quality is that he let me do what I wanted, as I wanted, right from the start: story, drawing, model…”
Flammarion, then Hachette Literature
Born in 1973, with a degree in philosophy, Guillaume Allary taught high school for a few years before embarking on various adventures: in 2003, he directed the documentary Philosophy on the platform, which features three high school philosophy teachers (Charles Pépin, Vincent Cespedes and Sophie Betbeder). To earn a living, he himself teaches at Sciences Po. He writes reports for the magazine She and is a contributor of projects for Flammarion editions.
“I wanted to give comic book authors access to the status of major authors, in a major genre. »Guillaume Allary
This profession of editor, which will finally take precedence over the others, he began to practice ” without knowing “, when, still a student, he helped his childhood friend Charles Pépin to rework the manuscript of his first novel. “We were in our twenties and didn’t know anyone in publishing, he said. So we broke into Flammarion a bit, where it ended up being published. » This first attempt opens the doors of the house and the environment to him.
A few years later, he began to publish books for Hachette Littérature. He thus reveals Faïza Guène (likes likes tomorrow, 2004, sold 400,000 copies), Charles Pépin, but also Riad Sattouf, this comic book author whose first two albums he had read, “hilarious”, and that he had approached as a fan at the Brive Book Fair in 2004. “I wanted to give comic book authors access to the status of major authors, in a major genre”, he specifies. That’s good, Riad Sattouf dreams of being considered a “literary” author.
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