Sempe: Everything Is Complicated

Jean-Jacques Sempe’s witty drawings and keen eye for the finer points of the human condition have delighted readers in France and beyond for over forty years. Now, his sharply observed and beautifully drawn cartoons are available in English for the first time.
In ’Everything is Complicated’, first published in 1963, a number of Sempe’s favourite subjects are already clearly in evidence, such as mild-mannered men and women with colourful inner lives and people who choose to express themselves through the medium of the protest sign. There are also cartoons about hapless tourists, pipe-smoking novelists and unruly schoolchildren. Sempe is equally adept at capturing the little indignities (and triumphs) of everyday life as he is at high farce and physical comedy. The captions were translated by Anthea Bell, who also helped to bring Asterix the Gaul to the English-speaking world.