The Arab of the Future 1
2014

The first volume covers the period from 1978 to 1984: from birth to the age of six.

Born of a Syrian father and a Breton mother, Riad Sattouf initially grows up in Tripoli, Libya, where his father has been appointed as a teacher. Coming from a poor background, passionately interested in politics, and obsessed with pan-Arabism, Abdel-Razak Sattouf raises his son Riad in the cult of the great Arab dictators, symbols of modernity and masculinity.

In 1984, the family moves to Syria and joins the rest of the Sattouf family in a small village near Homs. While his cousins give him a hard time (it doesn’t help that he is blond), the young Riad discovers the harshness of traditional farmer life. But his father has only one idea in mind: his son Riad will go to school in Syria to become an educated and modern Arab, an Arab of the future.
With more than 3.5 million copies sold worldwide and translated in 23 languages, The Arab of the future has become an international phenomenon. It is with devastating humor and great sensitivity that Riad Sattouf talks about his childhood and the story of his family in Mouammar Kadhafi’s Libya and Hafez el Assad’s Syria.