The Leaning Girl

Benoît Peeters was born in Paris on August 28, 1956. After publishing two novels early in his career, he experimented with diverse genres: essay, biography, illustrated story, photo novel, film, television, radio theater and of course comics.An Hergé specialist, he has written three books to date on the subject: The World of Hergé, Hergé, Son of Tintin, and Read Tintin. He is also the author of several books on comics, storyboards and biographical studies on Hitchcock, Nadar, Jacques Derrida and Paul Valéry.François Schuiten was born in Brussels on April 26, 1956, into a family of architects.Early in his career, he created two graphic novels with Claude Renard, Cymbiola and Rail. Then with his brother Luc, he created three graphic novels in the Hollow Grounds series. Since 1980, he has worked with Benoît Peeters on The Obscure Cities series. His graphic novels have been translated into a dozen languages and have received numerous international awards. He has also created many illustrations, posters and postage stamps across Europe. In 2002, he received the prestigious lifetime achievement award from the Angouleme festival. He published his first solo effort, The Beauty, in 2012, and designed a train museum, Train World, which opened in Brussels in 2015. His 2014 exhibition and accompanying book, Revoir Paris, has met with international praise.

Winner of the coveted Gaiman Award as the No. 1 translated foreign comic book series published in Japan in 2013, this story of perseverance and a young girl's search for love has been translated from it's original French into ten languages. Author and publisher Stephen D. Smith has now translated The Leaning Girl into English and it features an introduction by Karen Green, Graphic Novel Librarian at Columbia University.After a freak accident on the Star Express roller coaster, 13 year-old Mary Von Rathen begins to lean. Doctors can not help her, so she is sent by her selfish mother and hen-pecked father to a private school in Sodrovni. Mary escapes and joins the Robertson Circus where she remains for several years, until she hears from newspaper editor, Stanislas Sainclair, that a scientist, Axel Wappendorf, might be able to help her. Wappendorf is working on a rocket to reach a planet that could hold the secret to Mary's trouble. Meanwhile an artist, Augustin Desombres, has run away from the busy world and buys an empty building on the High Plains of Aubrac in the French countryside. He begins painting murals of strange globes. Now as a young woman, Mary decides to join Wappendorf in the rocket. On the alien planet, they discover an area with many globes where she has a chance meeting with the artist. Nominated for two 2015 Eisner Awards: BEST U.S. EDITION OF INTERNATIONAL MATERIAL and BEST PENCILER/INKER - François Schuiten.