Rights sold to: Taiwan (Aquarius), Korea (Sangsang School Publishing)
Under option in: Albania, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, USA, Vietnam
“What am I doing here?
I have a pitchfork in my hand, the handle slick with filth - I’m shifting manure. The cows are watching disdainfully, and the only soothing thing is the gentle gaze of one heifer. My hands are spattered with slurry, they stink. Every five minutes, I run to the kitchen sink to wash them. Yesterday, I wanted to be Fellini, today I’ve become a toilet attendant for cows.”
Jean-Louis Fournier can do anything. As a film student in Paris, he can decide he wants to overhaul a farm for the sake of the farmer’s lovely daughter. The father had once been a fishmonger, he could back to the fishmongers.
He is a bit mad, this Fournier, and when he is in love - which, apparently happens quite often - he goes even more mad. Perhaps that is why he can write books for us?
Well, let’s hope he stays in love a long time, then.
Before becoming a film director and creating cartoon characters for television (La Noiraude); before collaborating with Pierre Desproges on La Minute nécessaire de Monsieur Cyclopède; before writing twenty books that have made us laugh and cry (Grammaire française et impertinente, Le CV de Dieu, Il a jamais tué personne mon papa, Mon dernier cheveux noir); before receiving the 2008 Prix Femina for his autobiographical book Où on va papa? (Where We Going, Daddy?), Jean-Louis Fournier had another life. For a few months, he was a farm labourer…