Mai Petite Saigon

Mai Petite Saigon is a 240-page graphic novel, adapted as an animated read. It is not a game: you read. Each page appears at its own pace, bubble after bubble, with music, sounds and silences that never cover the drawing.

The story Mai-Anne is 26, with a maths PhD, a black belt in aikido and years of piano behind her. The perfect daughter. A genius impostor: she can slip into anyone's skin, especially the person everyone expects her to be.

Then her little brother Minh disappears. He was the only one in the family who dared to slam the door. Mai-Anne slams hers too, takes her sketchbook, her plush Coco Pouf and a handful of mandarins, and invents a name: Yu Mikan. She looks for Minh among Paris's artists, bars and penniless flatshares. And while she's at it, she means to lift the curse that hangs over her family.

What you'll find

• The whole book, first page to last, in French or English

• Page-by-page staging: slow pans across double pages, bubbles appearing one at a time, music and ambience that follow the reading

• Deliberate silences on the heaviest passages

• A making-of and extras

• About 2 hours of reading

Before you read This story deals with exile, the Vietnam War, family pressure, depression and suicide. It doesn't try to shock, but it doesn't hide what hurts either.

About Anh-Thy went through Louis-le-Grand and a Parisian engineering school. It took him fifteen years to finish Mai Petite Saigon, his first graphic novel.