Tamām-ī Ābī-yi Āsmān Persian 2025

The novel All the Blue of the Sky is the debut work of the French author Melissa de Costa, first published in 2019 by Éditions Carnets Nord. The novel received widespread acclaim from French readers and quickly became one of the year’s bestsellers. In 2024, a graphic adaptation of the book was released, illustrated by Juliette Bertadier with a screenplay by Carbon.

The narrative is simple yet profound. Émile, a twenty-six-year-old man suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s or a similar incurable neurological disease, decides to distance himself from the hospital and his family before complete memory loss sets in, embarking on a road trip with a camper van. He places an ad seeking a companion for the journey, and a woman named Joan responds. Three days later, Joan, wearing a black hat and carrying a backpack, joins Émile, and together they head toward the Pyrenees and beyond.

Their journey is as much inward as outward—a movement between hope and acceptance, fear of death and the joy of living, between love, friendship, and liberation from the past. De Costa, with a clear and evocative prose, portrays the collapse of memory and the body against the resilience of the human spirit and the will to live. Aware of his gradual decline, Émile finds a sense of calm and understanding of meaning and presence through the journey. Joan, carrying her own hidden wounds, also rediscovers part of herself through traveling with Émile.

In the graphic adaptation, these themes are conveyed through cool colors and expansive mountain landscapes, enhancing the sense of passing time and the delicacy of memory. Stylistically, All the Blue of the Sky blends road literature, introspection, and romance. Instead of focusing on dramatic events, the novel emphasizes the minutiae of moments, gentle conversations, silences, and reflections on impermanence. This slow, meditative rhythm sets the book apart from much popular fiction.

The public reception in France was remarkable; de Costa won the 2020 Alain-Fournier Prize for this novel, and its sale of several hundred thousand copies helped bring her subsequent works rapid recognition. Despite its melancholy subject, the book’s calm tone, poetic prose, and humanistic message about meaning and freedom in death have left a lasting impression on readers. In short, All the Blue of the Sky is a journey from the darkness of the mind to the clarity of the sky, a narrative of acceptance and love, exemplifying contemporary French literature that balances narrative simplicity with philosophical depth.