Mafalda, the most rebellious girl, goes on sale in English.

The Mafalda comic, one of the most popular in the Hispanic world and now 60 years old, has gone on sale in English in a world that has changed a lot since the time when that sassy little girl who hated injustice as much as soup 'lived'.

On Tuesday morning, boxes containing the first volume of Mafalda , published by Elsewhere Editions, were just arriving at Manhattan bookstores and taking their places on the shelves.

They're coming to market at a price of $18 , an affordable price in a market where books rarely go below $25. For now, only the first volume is available, with four more on the way .

The translation of Mafalda's very distinctive Buenos Aires idiom was the work of Frank Wynne (translator of Almudena Grandes and a number of French authors) . Wynne knows what he's talking about, or translating, because he lived in Buenos Aires for two years , where he absorbed the Buenos Aires dialect, which he has tried to translate into English, although he admits there have been some impossible jokes.

In a telephone conversation, Wynne doesn't hesitate to compare Mafalda to two legendary works of the genre: "Peanuts" and "Calvin and Hobbes." They all have in common that they are "books for adults," even though they present themselves as children's literature, and the publisher Elsewhere, which publishes Mafalda in English, specializes in children's comics.

"It's a satire of society that still works today," Wynne says, offering the following example: "Maybe there isn't a war in Vietnam, but there is one in Gaza and another in Ukraine," in which the reader can recognize the concerns that obsessed Mafalda.

Mafalda's conversations with a battered globe are still very relevant today , as are the cartoons where she dreams of being an interpreter at the United Nations and transforming attacks between countries into polite praise.

"Mafalda is very political, with a small p," Wynne reflects, " it talks about Vietnam, capitalism and communism ," and perhaps that is the reason why some previous English editions failed in a United States still gripped by Cold War prejudices in the years it was published in Argentina, between 1964 and 1973.

But Mafalda is also, or above all, a 6-year-old girl with naive reflections, a friend to her friends , even when they are as different as the superficial Susanita, the dreamer Felipe or the 'rustic' Manolito, son of the owner of a small winery more recognizable to a Latino than to a North American.

These are characters who have become archetypal, Wynne emphasizes, and recalls that in the Buenos Aires he knew, it was common to hear "Don't be so Susanita" (so gossipy, so classist).

" A lot of the jokes are commonplace; everyone can understand them . She's a kid trying to understand the adult world by constantly asking questions, and her parents don't always have the answers because they're so complicated," says Wynne, highlighting that childlike quality so recognizable in any country, at any time.

In fact, the translator (of Irish origin) says he discovered Mafalda when he lived in Paris in the 1980s and was surprised to find it such a literary phenomenon there , proving he had bridged oceans of distance and cultural differences. He also discovered he could recognize himself in this girl who was "so Argentine" and at the same time so universal.

We must be in the midst of a Mafalda revival, because Netflix recently announced plans for an animated series directed by Juan José Campanella , who is almost guaranteed to be a hit (he won an Oscar in 2010 for The Secret in Their Eyes ). Although the platform hasn't given a date, its premiere is expected next year.

When a chocolate-faced Mafalda said it was necessary to "stage a coup against chocolates," everyone understood what she was talking about in a Latin America sickened by militarism. In the United States of 2025, perhaps they'll also understand the wink of a girl who's already turned sixty.