Autoportrait

by Frédéric Pajak

Dans sa tradition personnelle du "récit écrit et dessiné", Frédéric Pajak nous fait partager, par l'entrecroisement des mots et du trait, sa tentative de définition de l'autoportrait et, au-delà, sa recherche du "qui suis-je ?" - question qu'il se posait à vingt ans et à laquelle, plus de trente ans plus tard, il reconnaît n'avoir toujours pas de réponse...

160 pages, Paperback

Published October 11, 2007

About the author

Frédéric Pajak is a Swiss-French writer and graphic artist born in Suresnes, France. He has written novels and film scripts, and he is a painter, as was his father, Jacques Pajak. He has edited and contributed to cultural and satirical periodicals and is the editor of the highly illustrated biannual journal Les Cahiers dessinés, devoted to graphic work ranging from cartooning to the drawings of old masters. But Pajak is best known for a long series of books of unique design which present his own full-page drawings accompanied by a biographical and autobiographical quasi-narrative. The first of these works, which made his reputation, was L’Immense solitude (1999), which won the Prix Michel Dentan in 2000. He followed this up with another similarly structured work, Le Chagrin d’amour (Broken Hearts), which dealt with Guillaume Apollinaire. Later subjects included Joyce, Luther, Freud, Nietzsche, Cesare Pavese, and Schopenhauer. In the same formal vein, Pajak’s ongoing Uncertain Manifesto, which began with the present work in 2012, reached its seventh volume in 2018. Volume III was awarded the Prix Médicis (Essai) in 2014.