L'Arabe du futur
| The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984: A Graphic Memoir | |
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| Date | 2015 |
| Page count | 160 pages |
| Publisher | Metropolitan Books |
| Creative team | |
| Writer | Riad Sattouf |
| Artist | Riad Sattouf |
| Original publication | |
| Language | French |
The Arab of the Future (French: L'Arabe du futur) is a graphic novel by award-winning French-Syrian cartoonist Riad Sattouf. The work recounts Sattouf's childhood growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the 1970s and 80s. The first volume of L'Arabe du futur won the 2015 Fauve d’Or prize for best graphic novel at the Angoulême International Comics Festival.
Sattouf’s father influenced the name of the book through his ideal of raising his son as an Arab of the future. Early in the story, the elder Sattouf proclaims, "I'd change everything among the Arabs. I'd force them to stop being bigots, to educate themselves, and to enter into the modern world. I'd be a good President."
Purposefully written from the perspective of a child, Sattouf employs simplistic yet comprehensive drawings that are more rudimentary yet not entirely dissimilar to his other works such as “La Vie Secrète des Jeunes”, his column in the famous satirical French magazine, Charlie Hebdo. Both The Arab of the Future and La Vie Secrète des Jeunes are written from Sattouf’s point of view, with the former describing his childhood and the latter his daily observations as an adult. Although both appear autobiographical, at least one reviewer calls into question elements of Sattouf's life story and family history.
Part one of three volumes, The Arab of the Future begins in France, where Riad Sattouf is born in 1978. He describes himself as a “perfect” little boy with "platinum-blonde hair" and “bright puppy-dog eyes.” Riad is the eldest son of Clémentine, a reserved French woman, and Abdul-Razak Sattouf, a flamboyant Sunni-Syrian man. They met when Clémentine took pity on Abdul-Razak's clueless failure to attract a friend of hers.
A major theme of the novel is how young Riad looks up to his father as a hero. Abdul-Razak, however, is portrayed as a complex character, being educated, ambitious and a loving father, yet also hypocritical, sexist, racist, and simultaneously authoritarian towards his wife and children yet almost infantile in his relationships with his mother and elder brother. Abdul-Razak appears particularly conflicted over religion; he prefers to describe himself as a secular modernizer (he drinks wine, eats pork, and does not pray) but he also exhorts his son to respect God and to learn to read the Qu'ran, seemingly motivated by the pressure of his conservative family and Syrian society.
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