Liked it a lot, both the art and the (translated) text. Funny, sad, strange, but familiar too. Very short read, but I feel like I got a lot out of it. I don't usually read graphic fiction or in this case memoirs, but I enjoy it when I do. ( )

Artwork is nice but the story is not interesting at all. I find it curious that the author's blond hair is so dark as an adult and I have to question his terribly vain recollections. ( )

spitze!!! ( )

I loved this book. Sattouf has an uncanny ability to evoke the way a child sees the world - through sound, smell, texture - small, vivid memories. It would have been easy to write this story with a sense of self-consciousness - to make the whole thing a commentary about the Arab world vs. the Western world for example, or to play up the similarities and differences between them in a deliberate way. But that's not the feeling I got from this story. The young Riad just observes the two worlds he lives in - what he likes about them, what he doesn't like - with the microscopic focus of a child, not the value judgments of an adult. Like any child, Riad just accepts the rather bizarre details of his cross-cultural life as normal - it's all he's known.

The family drama is the real heart of the story. Because we see everything through the child Riad's eyes, we don't get much of a sense of the relationship between his parents, but we get a strong sense of how they each impact the child. His mother seems kindly but rather blank, sometimes mildly rebellious but generally making a point of remaining in the background, while his father dominates every scene he is in. Despite his many flaws - his boorishness, prejudice and backwardness - he is still rather likable and sympathetic. His unstoppable enthusiasm is infectious, even when it is dramatically misguided, and it's easy to see why the young Riad thinks of him as a superhero. His story - the only member of a peasant family to learn to read, let alone go to college - is astounding, and it's hardly surprising that the cognitive dissonance between his old and new lives (brought into sharp relief when he moves the family to live in his childhood village in Syria) causes him to behave erratically sometimes. He is sincere in his belief in Arab nationalism and the need to modernise, but emotionally he cannot let go of the religiosity, superstition and supremacist assumptions of his upbringing. In a way, the figure of Abdel-Razek Sattouf is a tragic hero, brought down by his own hamartia.

Sattouf is continuing the story in follow-up volumes - I believe there will be 3 in total. The second edition has been published but has not yet been translated into English. I look forward to seeing how the story develops, and especially to getting a fuller picture of his mother Clementine's personality.

Some may not like the very simple cartoon style of the art, but I think it's very appropriate to the story. Highly recommended to any reader - those with an interest in the Middle East will be drawn to it, but that background is not necessary to enjoy 'The Arab of the Future'. ( )

I'm left a little perplexed by this, but I wonder whether that was kind of the point. Even though this is all from Riad's POV, I kept being confounded by the father, who I thought was supposed to be progressive by reading the synopsis. I suppose he was by traditional Arab standards, but boy howdy. I kept waiting for the mother to leave, but I guess she was cool with it? The "Arab of the Future" concept for the Sattouf family isn't mentioned or made evident until the very end, so I just kind of had the feeling of being adrift during the read. ( )