Riad Sattouf named Grand Prix winner at 50th annual Angoulême

The creator of ‘The Arab of the Future’ wins the French festival’s biggest prize.

Riad Sattouf, the creator of The Arab of the Future and Esther’s Notebook, has won this year’s Grand Prix at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.

The 44-year-old French cartoonist, who has also directed feature films, was quoted as saying “I am deeply honored and moved. It’s the centerpiece that was missing at the top of my ego pyramid” upon accepting the award.

Sattouf is best known for The Arab of the Future, or L’Arabe du Futur, his six-book collection about growing up in Libya and Syria in the 1970s and 1980s. Four of them have been released in the United States. He’s also a former contributor to France’s satirical publication Charlie Hebdo and is the creator of the Esther’s Notebooks comic strip, a collection of which was released this month in the United States.

Sattouf’s poster for the 50th annual Angoulême International Comics Festival

Sattouf was one of several creators nominated for the award; the other finalists he was up against included Fun Home creator Alison Bechdel and French writer and illustrator Catherine Meurisse. He also created one of this year’s posters for Angoulême’s 50th, which you can see above. Other posters were created by Julie Doucet, who won the Grand Prix last year, and Attack on Titan creator Hajime Isayama:

The 50th annual Angoulême festival wraps up today.

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