WINE DRINKS

In Ville Ranta's sixth title at Île et Là, the Finnish author multi-award-winning book delivers a quasi-autobiographical tale of friendship, work and alcohol. Ville Ranta, forty-five, looks back on his friendship with two former colleagues from a famous Finnish cultural magazine. On the occasion of a trip to his hometown, he finds his two friends who seem to be on bad terms. Simon Appelgren, the magazine's former editor, is clearly in a bad patch: divorced, he has to stop drinking for health reasons. third thief, Samuli, who replaced Simo after his departure, also seems having decided to quit alcohol. Ville is disturbed by the strained ties between Simo and Samuli but even more by this desire for sobriety, him for whom Alcohol is essential, not only for writing and drawing but also to chat with friends and address existential questions. During this essentially interior journey, Ville remembers, in a colorful story (of red wine), their meeting twenty years earlier, his arrival, a very young designer, within the editorial staff of the magazine, the memorable arguments, the many drinking sessions and his role in the breakup of their friendship, at the time of the publication of the caricatures of Mohammed in the European press in 2006.