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Robert Laffont
EAN : 9782221259948
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 304
Size : 190 x 245 mm
The Desire of being useless

Dominique Petitfaux (introduction de)
Release date : 27/01/2022
The unique autobiography of the creator of Corto Maltese.
The key to exploring the legend of Hugo Pratt and to understanding the true essence of the author and his work…
Hugo Pratt is the result of a curious mix of French, English, Ashkenazi and Turkish heritages. Born in Venice, he experiences his sentimental education in Ethiopia where he discovers fascism and love, learning to draw at the same time he is learning to despise colonialism. In the liberated city of... Hugo Pratt is the result of a curious mix of French, English, Ashkenazi and Turkish heritages. Born in Venice, he experiences his sentimental education in Ethiopia where he discovers fascism and love, learning to draw at the same time he is learning to despise colonialism. In the liberated city of Venice, he subsequently frequents and endorses the colors of the enemies and the allies. At the age of twenty-two, he embarks on a journey to Buenos Aires where he divides his time between the drawing of comic books, travelling and fashionable extravaganzas. He creates more than 9,000 comic book pages from “Ace of Spades” to the iconic “Corto Maltese”, who would become one of the most popular comic book figures from the 1970ies to the 1990ies. From debaucheries to adventures, he travels around the world more than three times, joining the illustrious ranks of the likes of Stevenson, Melville, Jack London or Arthur Rimbaud. As Hugo Pratt writes:  “My life had started long before I was born; I reckon it will also go on without me long after my demise”.
The other journey is an interior one. Through his travels and adventures, Hugo Pratt initiates himself to the mysteries of Kabala, Voodoo and other strange phenomena he discovers in six to seven languages and through 30,000 read and collected books, thus becoming himself the mysterious Venetian nobleman of the Corto Maltese comics, who enchants the reader with his black sisters, his Indian cousins, his wives, his friends and his deaths….
This collection of interviews, published for the first time in 1991, four years prior to the death of Hugo Pratt, is the only autobiographical work signed by the creator of Corto Maltese. This new, complete and definitive edition has been entirely restructured and contains now, in addition to a chapter narrating the last years of the author’s life, the illustrated notebook which had only been published as a part of the luxury edition.


Key points:
A completely restructured and beautifully remastered new edition of this eminent classical work and important part of the heritage collection of Éditions Robert Laffont.
The publication date coincides with the premiere of a new documentary on the mythic father of Corto Maltese at the important festival at Angoulême in 2022.
The two first editions of the memoirs have already sold over 25,000 copies.
 
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EAN : 9782221259948
Shaping : BROCHE
Pages : 304
Size : 190 x 245 mm
Robert Laffont