The Adventures of Tintin: The Tournesol Affair

One evening, something strange starts happening in Moulinsart – for no apparent reason, window panes, mirrors, vases, chandeliers burst and shatter into tiny pieces… Trying to figure out what’s going on, Tintin notices that all the episodes with exploding glass happen when Tournesol is in his laboratory. And indeed: as soon as the professor left for Geneva for a congress on nuclear physics, everything stopped! Well, and the boxes full of broken glass found in Tournesol’s laboratory only confirmed this guess. What’s worse: after visiting the laboratory, it becomes obvious to Tintin and Captain Haddock that someone is very interested in their friend’s scientific developments. Without wasting time, they fly to Geneva to warn the professor of the danger…

After three consecutive dilogies (Pirate, Inca and Lunar), the work on which took more than 10 years, Hergé returned to the format of a one-volume story, which he never changed again.

The publication of the 18th volume of The Adventures of Tintin began in December 1954 in Tintin magazine and continued for more than a year, until February 1956 (the album version was also released that year). The growth of international tensions could not help but affect the thoughts and moods of the author, so the appearance of a spy theme in the plot seems quite natural: it is not for nothing that many critics call The Tournesol Affair the most cinematic album in the series, comparing it to the films of A. Hitchcock and C. Reed. However, Hergé in no way set himself the task of creating a spy thriller in the spirit of The 39 Steps or The Man Who Knew Too Much, so he filled the next volume with a fair amount of humor, which makes him related not so much to Hitchcock as to B. Wilder. Oddly enough, this volume, which is perhaps the most intense in the series in terms of plot, also became one of the funniest: the book is literally full of gags, both visual (what is the “great journey of the adhesive plaster” worth!) and textual (let’s remember at least the fantastic monologue of the chief of police of the Bordyur airport). An interesting fact: “The Tournesol Affair” is one of the few adventures of Tintin (completed, not counting the first volumes of the dilogies), in which the hero does not leave the borders of continental Europe.

Recommended reader age: 7+

Author: Hergé
Artist: Herge
Translation: Mikhail Khachaturov
Number of pages: 64
Publisher: Melik-Pashayev
Cover type: Hardcover
Dimensions: 290 × 217 × 10 mm
ISBN: 978-5-00041-556-6
Series: The Adventures of Tintin