Monsieur Lambert: Sempe

Monsieur Lambert is a gentle, and unmistakably French, graphic novel with text and pictures by one of the world’s best-loved illustrators. Jean-Jacques Sempe offers a glimpse of the everyday lives and secret passions of the regulars in a small Parisian bistro. When Monsieur Lambert does not turn up for lunch at his usual time, the other regulars speculate that he must have met a woman. How else can they explain his strange new behaviour? The diners start discussing women they have loved and lost and, in doing so, they reveal unexpected facets of their own lives and personalities.
The restaurant and its regulars are brought to life vividly in a series of drawings which, together with handwritten dialogue and a laconic commentary, display Sempe’s signature unerring eye and ear for the telling details of human behaviour. The text was translated from French by award-winning translator Anthea Bell.