Hergé
Tintin is a bit of a departure from the other novels on this list. It's certainly not for lack of other Belgian authors; there's a tonne, including one of my favs, Amélie Nothomb. But L'Affaire Tournesol is indeed the last book I read by a Belgian author. And just as well, Hergé is certainly Belgium's most famous author by a long shot. Tintin had been published in more than 70 languages with sales of his books totalling more than 200 million copies worldwide.
L'Affaire Tournesol – available in English translation by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner as The Calculus Affair – follows Tintin as he travels to rescue Professor Calculus from the Cold-War clutches of fictional Borduria. Borduria is a vaguely Balkan/Eastern-Euro type place that always made me think of hermetic Albania, right up to the moustache-driven personality cult of Enver Hoxha like Borduria's Marshal Kûrvi-Tasch. A trip to Albania prompted me to pull L'Affaire Tournesol off my childhood bookshelf, and it didn't disappoint with its Cold-War plotting and counter-plots, espionage and double crosses.
It made me realise that Tintin exposed me to a lot of things that I probably wasn't totally conscious of as a child – such as poverty, racism, and international geopolitics – but that definitely had a lasting impact on my development. Tintin, shaping young minds since 1929.
It made me realise that Tintin exposed me to a lot of things that I probably wasn't totally conscious of as a child – such as poverty, racism, and international geopolitics – but that definitely had a lasting impact on my development. Tintin, shaping young minds since 1929.
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