King David

David B,50,is in Delhi for the first time,as part of Litteratures: A French Festival of Letters,and will be speaking with compatriot Nicolas Wild at the India Habitat Center today evening.

Epileptic (titled L’Ascension du Haut Mal in French) unfolds in the 1960s France. The Algerian War of Independence has ended and the country is at the peak of economic growth. But there is no known cure for epilepsy. Black ink pushes against the walls of the panels,as 11-year-old Pierre-Francois Beauchard watches his brother Jean-Christophe reel into unconsciousness from an epileptic fit. As his family looks for cure,Pierre-Francois’ childhood is visited by ghosts. He befriends the ghosts and later,from 1996 to 2003,unleashes them in a series of autobiographical panels. He calls himself David B.

The fame spreads,but David B never grows out of his childhood. In an e-mail interview,he says,“In all my works there is an autobiographical element. All my books are actually linked to Epileptic where I spoke about the illness of my older brother for the first time.”

He began drawing professionally in the early 1980s,mainly for children’s magazines. “Comics were very popular in France,but those were 46 pages in colour. Graphic novel didn’t exist very much at that time,” says David B. He didn’t wait for a revolution to happen. With a group of comic-book artists,he co-founded L’Association in 1990.

An independent publishing house for comic-book artists,L’Association witnessed the metamorphosis of Pierre-Francois Beauchard into David B. “I became David B with the creation of L’Association. Before,I was doing comics on command,I was not able to publish my own stories,” says David B,who along with his compatriots pioneered a new wave in the French comic art form. “We were fed up with the conservatism of the French comics in those years. We wanted to introduce new forms,like the graphic novel,and new subjects,such as the autobiography,” says David B.

In 1996,he began working on L’Ascension du Haut Mal that literally means The Rise of the High Evil. It was later published as a six-volume autobiographical epic and came out in English in 2002 as Epileptic.

David B is currently working on a book with French scholar and Middle East specialist Jean Pierre Filiu. “It talks about the relations between America and Muslim countries through the ages,starting from the war against the Barbary pirates in the 1800s to the war in Afghanistan and Iraq,” says David B.

David B will be speaking at the IHC today and on Friday. Contact: 43500217