© Anjali Sharma

Scriptwriting is a fairly solitary exercise. Therefore, I love to write documentary comics, because they are a way of discovering, and meeting other people and other cultures. I'm starting to write a comic project on the Ganges, which will allow me to tackle both cultural and ecological issues.

Clément Xavier, born in Maputo in 1981, is an acclaimed comic book creator and graphic novelist known for works like Yékini, le roi des arènes (Prix Révélation, Angoulême Festival 2015), Geronimo, Mémoires d'un résistant apache, and Les amazones de Londres (Prix Château de Cheverny 2021). He has adapted Gérard Noiriel's Histoire Populaire de la France into a graphic novel and authored Waco Horror (2020) and Washing Town (2022), both addressing significant social issues. During his residency at The Alice Boner Institute in Varanasi, Clément worked on his project Ganga - biography of a river along with illustrator and co-author Lisa Lugrin. He has already signed a contract for this project with French publisher Futuropolis and the graphic novel is to be released in 2026. As part of his outreach activities, he conducted a workshop and talk at Banaras Hindu University’s Department of Applied Arts and participated in the Shillong Literature Festival, where he joined a panel discussion on "Image, Words, Stories: Graphic Novels & Comics." Additionally, a Calcutta publisher showed interest in acquiring the rights to Yékini, le roi des arènes, now translated into English, which could lead to further collaborations, including his planned biography of the Ganges.