Simon Lamouret and Pema Wangchuk Dorjee Publish Graphic Novel «Sikkim Stories»

Released on 2 September 2026 by Éditions Sarbacane, «Sikkim Stories» is the third India-set album by Simon Lamouret, following Bangalore and L'Alcazar. The book is co-written with Pema Wangchuk Dorjee, a Sikkimese journalist Lamouret met during an author residency in Gangtok, the regional capital where most of the narrative unfolds. Three intertwined destinies carry the story: Jaspreet, a naive young Indian soldier confronting border tensions with China; Sangay, an elderly Drokpa yak herder fighting to keep a dwindling herd alive; and Pema, a botany professor from New Delhi who returns to Gangtok to settle her father's estate and must navigate bureaucratic hurdles and local codes, from land ownership to gender inequality. The Himalayan setting frames a choral tale about an enclaved, partly militarized territory near Tibet. Lamouret's drawing uses a narrow palette of blue and yellow with a risograph-inspired texture, and a thicker pen nib chosen to restrain his detail. Large landscape panels include a high-altitude lake whose calm waters flood a valley after monsoon storms. The album appeared four days after the deadly partial collapse of the Tibetan Langtang Lirung glacier.