With Zebraska, Isabelle Bary tells the story of a child with high intellectual potential and the difficulties he can face in a world that does not always know how to welcome those who fall outside the norm. The subject did not come to her by chance: her own son was diagnosed as HPI. “On a découvert qu’il était HPI quand il avait 6 ans. Il a traversé des années très compliquées, nous aussi du coup. Aujourd’hui, il a 25 ans, il va super bien, donc j’aime bien le dire quand même pour montrer qu’il y a une lumière au bout du tunnel”.
But the author did not want simply to recount her family’s experience. Fiction, she says, allows her to turn an intimate reality into a story and, above all, to reach readers in a different way.
“Ce que j’adore dans la fiction, c’est que justement on peut transposer nos émotions pour servir une histoire. Et ce que j’adore aussi dans la fiction, c’est qu’on parle au cœur des gens avant de leur parler à la raison. Et ça, je trouve sensationnel”, she explained.
For her, being HPI is not a problem in itself. The difficulty, she suggests, lies more in the way society looks at people who function differently. “C’est plutôt un cadeau qu’un fardeau. Mais ça peut devenir un fardeau dans un monde comme le nôtre qui a encore un petit peu de mal à apprivoiser la différence”.
That idea of difference runs through her work and now takes a new form with the adaptation of Zebraska into a comic strip. The book remains especially dear to her, in part because of her publisher Luce Wilquin, who died in 2022, to whom she pays tribute: “C’est une sacrée nana, une personne de caractère”.
Books so they are not forgotten
In this new version, Isabelle Bary also wants to encourage younger readers to enjoy reading and to invite them to look differently at the people around them. Volume 2 even takes readers to 2055, in a world that has lost its books and, with them, part of its memory.
For the author, the danger is far from trivial. “La transmission est très importante. Les livres, le langage aussi. Les livres sont encore quand même l’outil principal pour véhiculer la langue. Et une langue qui s’appauvrit, c’est un esprit qui s’appauvrit”.
Music also has a place in that reflection. A song by the band Téléphone, Ça, c’est vraiment toi, accompanies the second album of the comic. Isabelle Bary sees in it an echo of affection for someone unconventional: “La différence est notre seule énergie renouvelable. Sans différence, on n’avance pas. Si on se ressemble tous, on n’invente plus rien”.
A Buddha, a film and the same wish to go towards others
That desire to move beyond differences is reflected even in a small object Isabelle Bary brought on set: a small sandalwood Buddha, received in Burma in 1994 during a round-the-world trip.
The memory remains vivid. In a house where she had been welcomed with her partner, a joiner had proposed a cultural exchange. In return for a few objects of little value, he offered them the figurine, which he had carved himself. For the author, it has since symbolised “l’humanité, l’envie d’aller vers l’autre”, as well as “le courage” and “la liberté”.
That philosophy echoes her favourite film, Green Book. She sees in it two characters who seem to have nothing in common, yet end up enriching one another: “Tout l’art dans ce film est de traiter un sujet quand même grave et profond, d’abord avec énormément d’humour, et avec ces personnages qui sont terriblement humains, et ils s’apportent chacun quelque chose”.
At heart, this link between stories, books, journeys and cinema always brings Isabelle Bary back to the same point. “J’aime les gens profondément. J’essaie toujours de voir en eux ce qu’il y a de joli avant le reste”.
It is an apt way to conclude a meeting shaped by difference, but above all by what it can bring when one chooses to approach it.
But the programme was not over before François’ cultural recommendations, which on Friday were: Les 100 romans culte à lire dans sa vie by Sarah Sauquet, the Brussels International Film Festival from 4 to 12 September and the new album Latidos by Chicos y Mendez, to be discovered live on 19 September at the Ancienne Belgique.
That brings Culture en Prime to a close, but the next instalment will be broadcast next week on La Une and streamed on RTBF Auvio.