Handcuff & Quenotte

Menotte ran away from home and has been living with his dog Quenotte in a disused building on the edge of the forest. Orphaned, he survives on petty thefts and burglaries. Thanks to its infinitely extendable finger and the sharp teeth of his little companion, no lock can resist them! In nearby, there is also Max and his toad. Despite their age difference, Handcuff eventually becomes friends with him. Together, they spend their day to explore the city's gloomy wastelands and industrial wastelands deserted. To relieve boredom, they throw stones at passers-by and it makes you laugh. As they wander, they end up coming across the camp of the three of the Oak gang and rush to ransack it. It is the beginning of hostilities between the two clans! In this War of the Buttons disenchanted, there is above all a fight for emancipation. Adolescents in the margin, left to their own devices in the world of invisible adults, they invent themselves their own identities and build their mythology. At the heart of this utopia naive, maturity sometimes emerges where you least expect it, through rebellion, brotherhood, love or even the beginnings of an organization of independent living. Menotte & Quenotte is Michel's first long story Esselbrügge, a young German author who we were able to read in French for the first time, a few years ago, at L'employee du moi with L'usine à tête de fat in the Twenty-Four collection.