The Braid or Lalita’s Journey

As she does every morning, Smita untangles her daughter Lalita’s hair. She has never cut it – in India, women keep their hair from birth for a long time, sometimes all their lives. She divides the hair into three strands, which she intertwines to make a braid. But today is not a day like any other. Today Lalita starts school.

This beautiful, luminous graphic album tells the story of little Lalita and her mother Smita’s journey across India, both born Dalits. It’s a wonderful story of life, rebellion, belief and hope, magnificently illustrated, that opens the way to reflection on social differences, the status of women and access to education.

This album is a sensitive look at the situation of women and girls in India, particularly those from low castes. It is also a way of underlining the crucial need to fight against the discrimination that prevents thousands of people from living with dignity.

Rights sold: Denmark, Italy, Japan, Poland, Spain, Turkey

–Adapted from the bestseller novel La Tresse (more than 1000000 copies sold in France)

-A movie based on this book was released in 2023  

The Author

Laetitia Colombani is a screenwriter, director and actress who also writes for the theatre. The success of her novel The Kite (Le Cerf-volant) follows in the footsteps of The braid (La tresse), which has sold over 2 million copies in France.

The Illustrator

A graduate of the École Estienne, Clémence Pollet continued her training at the Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy. Alongside illustration, she also practises various engraving techniques, including etching, aquatint and linocut.