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The Quick & Flupke series (several books, if not all) was published not long ago by Euro Books India, but these seem to have disappeared without much of a trace.

A few Indian online retailers still have these in their catalogues, but out of stock with little sign of getting them in stock again.

They were not really well-made editions compared to the Mammoth editions I'd seen in my school days (one of which I still have), but they were good enough to have and better than nothing.

I had borrowed one of these Euro Books editions from a neighbourhood library in Bombay about a decade ago, was pleasantly surprised to find that they still had the same copy this month (still in prime condition), and was absolutely thrilled that they agreed to sell it to me for peanuts.

But what happened to the rest, and what happened to the publisher itself? Any sign of these books, online or offline?

It's amazing how time trots along so swiftly these days - it's actually been thirteen years since these books were released!

As to what happened to them, well, I fear that they just went out out of print, probably down to lack of sales, or to allow the publisher to move onto something else.

Depending on where you read, Euro Books India was either a local company, or an imprint of Egmont used for the Indian market.

Having worked in the publishing industry, my experience is that the business end of such ventures is very very complicated, and the names that appear on books, and the companies that produce them, and who owns what can be like navigating a labyrinth, so in some ways both may be true - for example a parent company of Egmont (if there is one) might already own, or have bought an existing publisher in India, and then license the books from one of its branches to another.

At the end of the day, it may not be worth trying to untangle the threads, as it doesn't really make much difference - the books became unavailable not too long after they first appeared, and are only available second-hand these days as far as I know.

It's frustrating that they were so difficult to source internationally, and apparently quite hard to find in India, but I think it just indicates that there were not too many of them printed (or if there were lots of them, that they sold out quickly, and people like to hang onto them).

I remain hopeful that they will be made available more widely and readily at some point in the future, but cannot say where or when! Until then, I'll just keep waiting! :-)

jock123, I got them at Arvee Books, a Malaysian website, two years ago. It looks like they're still available new too!

It took a while for them to arrive, being so far away, but it's still possible to get them. For anyone who can't read French, I'd highly recommend them.

It should be noted that four of the eleven books are available elsewhere in English. Forbidden Games and Everything's Fine were published as Double Trouble and Two of a Kind respectively by Mammoth in 1992, translated by Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner. These are also the only English-language Quick and Flupke books to be hand-lettered. Under Full Sail and Fasten Your Seatbelts were published by Egmont in 2009, again with a different translation by David Radzinowicz, also with different digital lettering. The translator of the Euro Books versions is not credited in the books.

The last (twelfth) book in this collection contains gags by Johann de Moor, the son of Hergé's assistant Bob de Moor. It is not available in English and is titled Haute Tension.

It's good news that you can probably still get them!

I'd just like to add, to avoid dissapointment, that the Egmont and the Mammoth translations have long since been out of print (though they can be obtained second-hand).

Hello,

What about the quality?

That's a nice find! They're charging about 3 times the cover price of the Eurobooks editions in India, but that's really not unexpected since it's been so long, I guess.


I have one Egmont edition (Double Trouble) and one Eurobooks edition (Full Sail), the latter is significantly poorer in quality - shabby design, not-so-great digital font, and glossy paper that's not the best (by my tastes, probably not everyone's).

But one thing to note is that Eurobooks managed to publish many more of the original albums in English, Mammoth & co did only two albums I believe. So if you're really dying to get the Quick & Flupke collection in English, there's little choice! Personally, I aim to try and get them only as and when (and if) I find them going cheap. But, that's all down to personal choice and how badly you want them (or how much of your money to want to spend on this.) :D