The Arab of the Future () is a graphic memoir by French cartoonist Riad Sattouf. The work recounts Sattouf's childhood growing up in France, Libya and Syria in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. 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 title of the memoir 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 than, 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. In 2020, Sattouf announced the memoir's fifth volume was finished with only one extra volume pending before finalizing the saga.
Plot
Vol. 1: 1978–1984
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 Qur'an, seemingly motivated by the pressure of his conservative family and Syrian society.
With Clémentine transcribing his words and "rendering them intelligible," Abdul-Razak obtains a Ph.D. in history from the Sorbonne. In 1980, he moves the family to Libya after accepting a job as an associate professor. (He is paid in US dollars, with the funds sent to an account in the Channel Islands.)
Prime Minister Muammar Gaddafi has abolished private property, meaning all unoccupied housing is free for the taking. This causes the Sattouf family to lose their first residence when a policeman's family claims it. They are forced to move into a large apartment block described as a "ghetto for expatriates." Riad befriends with two neighbor children: Abani, an Indian girl, and Adnan, a Yemeni boy. Despite his very young age, Riad observes the propaganda of the Gaddafi regime and frequent food scarcity and rationing. The family remains in Libya for two years, during which Riad's grandmother and uncle visit them from Syria. When Gaddafi's state of the popular masses declares new laws requiring people of different social classes to swap occupations, Abdul-Razak fears losing his teaching job, and the family leaves Libya in 1982.
The family returns to France for a short period. Riad meets his recently divorced, womanizing maternal grandfather, then they stay with Riad's grandmother in Brittany. She teaches him about the family's history and her own physically abusive grandmother. She draws parallels between the rural France of the past, exemplified by her elderly neighbor who lives in extremely rustic conditions, and the developing Arab world of the modern era. Riad attends the local kindergarten, where he is praised for his drawings of French president Georges Pompidou and a sculpture of a bull. While in France, Clémentine gives birth to Riad's younger brother, Yahya.