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.
