
Nicolas Wild
At 42, Nicolas Wild travels the world in his well-researched and quirky comic books. Combining realism and humour, he delivers his own experience to better account for the state of the world.
Updated on 10/03/2020
2 min
Originally from Alsace, Nicolas Wild trained in the illustration workshop created by the Strasbourg School of Decorative Arts. A great adventurer, he travelled and studied in the United States and worked in an orphanage in India before flying to Afghanistan. In 2005 he began his collaboration with Boulet and Lucie Albon by co-writing Le Vœu de Marc (Marc’s Wish). Two years later, he began his Kaboul Disco trilogy with the first instalment, Comment je ne me suis pas fait kidnapper en Afghanistan (How I Did Not Get Kidnapped in Afghanistan), and completed it in 2008 with Comment je ne suis pas devenu opiomane en Afghanistan (How I Did Not Become an Opium Addict in Afghanistan).
From the top of a glacier to refugee camps and the Chernobyl site, Nicolas Wild travels through Nepal, Ukraine, Turkey and Lebanon. His latest book Mondo Disco, published in 2019, compiles these journeys into a book of eight stories completed between 2012 and 2018.
Since the publication of his first book, Le Bourreau (The Executioner), in 2000, Nicolas Wild has shown us his unique, happily quirky tone. Using his own travels as material, he seeks to convey his experience in comics often bathed in black humour. Thanks to this approach, his work brings together the pleasure of illustrative storytelling and a wide field of investigation of the cultures encountered in each country.
Initially the creator of a website where he chose to recount his adventures, the author was able to delve deeper into his scripting techniques in comics. Dealing with both women's rights and the exploitation of children, particularly in Afghanistan, he offers a realistic insight and another way of understanding the country's geopolitical situation.
Sent to Afghanistan by a communications agency, Nicolas Wild turned his mission into the opportunity to use the medium of a children's comic strip to produce a biting observation of a little-known land. Without trying to impose his vision of the world, he remains as neutral as possible by showing his reader different, original and uncertain, but above all human, societies.
In 2014, Nicolas Wild won the France Info prize for a comic based on current affairs and reporting for Ainsi se tut Zarathoustra (So Zarathoustra Said Nothing), and in 2016 he was invited by the Krakow Comic Festival to translate his work into Polish.
- 2005
2005
He begins his collaboration with La Boîte à bulles publishing company and co-writes Le Vœu de Marc with Boulet.
- 2007
2007
Nicolas Wild publishes Comment je ne me suis pas fait kidnapper en Afghanistan, the first instalment of the Kaboul Disco trilogy.
- 2014
2014
He receives the France Info prize for a comic based on current affairs and reporting for Ainsi se tut Zarathoustra. It is selected at the Angoulême Festival.
- 2019
2019
He publishes Mondo Disco, a book comprising eight stories.

Winner of an Institut français Stendhal Residency, Nicolas Wild will travel to Ethiopia in 2020.
The Stendhal programme allows french authors or authors living in France to travel to a foreign country and work on a writing project related to that country. Learn more about the Stendhal programme