Mr Tan, mortal anger

ofon one side, there is Mortelle Adèle, the little red-haired girl with the big head from children’s books that children adore. Not sweet, not calm, not dreamy, she is, on the contrary, and contrary to the diktats imposed on girls, irreverent, rebellious and ferociously freed from everything. Her adventures send convention crashing down as she herself catapults her sorrows away, winnows over the glittery girls at school, puts her parents up for sale, and regularly attempts to slay her cat, Ajax (originally christened Sudden Death).

A little girl whose adventures have sold 10 million copies in ten years, with almost half in the past year. A colossal, dazzling success, which no one had anticipated, and which hides, paradoxically, for genesis the dark and silent cry of a…