The Arab of the Future 4
A Graphic Memoir of a Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992
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- USD 14.99
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- USD 14.99
Descripción editorial
The penultimate installment in the bestselling French graphic memoir series—hailed as “exquisitely illustrated” and “irresistible”—covering the years of Riad Sattouf’s adolescence, from 1987-1992.
In the fourth volume of The Arab of the Future, little Riad has grown into a teenager. In the previous books, his childhood was complicated by the pull of his two cultures—French and Syrian—and his parents’ deteriorating relationship. Now his father, Adbel-Razak, has left to take a job in Saudi Arabia, and after making a pilgrimage to Mecca, turns increasingly towards religion. But after following him from place to place and living for years under the harsh conditions of his impoverished village, Riad’s mother Clementine has had enough. Refusing to live in a country where women have no rights, she returns with her children to live in France with her own mother… until Abdel-Razak shows up unexpectedly to drag the family on yet another journey.
As the series builds to a climax, we see Riad struggle with problems both universal (bullies at school) and specific (his mother’s sudden illness, the judgment of his religious relatives). And as Abdel-Razak returns again to the same fantastical dreams he pursued in previous books, we see him become more and more unhinged, until ultimately he crosses the line from idealism to fanaticism, leading to a dramatic breaking point.
Full of the same gripping storytelling and lush visual style for which Sattouf’s previous works have won numerous awards, The Arab of the Future 4 continues the saga of the Sattouf family and their peripatetic life in France and the Middle East.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The phenomenal penultimate volume of Sattouf's epic five-part autobiography takes a dark turn, charting the French-Syrian cartoonist's descent into puberty in the late 1980s and early '90s as his family fractures around him. Leaving childhood means leaving a life insulated from the cares and expectations of adults; the relationship between Sattouf's father and mother is so contemptuous it's brought out each other's worst impulses. "I've had it up to here with Arabs!" Sattouf's French-born mother screams during an argument. Meanwhile, Sattouf's Syrian-born father, once a promising young academic, finds comfort and social acceptance in the embrace of fundamentalist religion and nationalism which transform him into a misogynist and virulent anti-Semite. Sattouf's parents now live apart, with his father teaching in Saudi Arabia and sending money to France, where Sattouf, his siblings, and his mother live. As an adolescent, Sattouf is more of a witness to this schism than an active participant, and his concerns center around a growing awareness of his body's transformation, the loss of his childhood cuteness, and navigating the social politics of middle school. Drawn with broad comedic cartoons, these moments keep the toxic destruction of his family from overwhelming the narrative. Sattouf depicts the disappointments and uncertainties of growing up in a unique multicultural world in a way that's sometimes tense, sometimes humorous, and always brilliant. (Nov.)
