The Arab of the Future 2

I tore through two volumes of The Arab of the Future, by Riad Sattouf - it's the most enjoyable graphic novel I've read in a while * Zadie Smith * This is a masterpiece that deserves the widest readership. The Arab Of The Future reminds us that, in talented hands, graphic novels are capable of carrying the weightiest themes, making us think, and touching our hearts while also keeping us hugely entertained. Riad Sattouf is one of the great creators of our time' * Alain De Botton * The Arab of the Future is wonderfully observed, funny, grim, sharp and sad. Riad Sattouf, with his ear for anecdote, his nimble drawing and his understanding of human frailty, has created a masterpiece. * Posy Simmonds * I joyously recommend this book to you. You will be moved, entertained and edified. Often simultaneously * Mark Haddon * The second volume of Riad Sattouf's acclaimed graphic memoir takes a darker turn as he endures school and his father is complicit in a terrible crime... I loved it * Rachel Cooke, Observer Graphic Book of the Month * "Sattouf experienced both Gaddafi's Libya and Hafez al-Assad's Syria while still a small boy. Kids don't spend a lot of time reflecting on totalitarianism, but they do form strong impressions. His simple depictions of living in an almost-abandoned building for expatriates in Libya, or of watching Assad praying on TV are the kind of banal micro-details that would lose their significance in written prose. Captured in the panels of a cartoon strip, however, they attain a luminous resonance that lingers long after you've finished the book. * Guardian * Like Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, the story captures wonderfully the disorientating effect of growing up between Arab and European cultures. Sattouf has a fine eye for the details and characters of his childhood in Syria, where the possibility of sudden violence was ever present * New Statesman * Sattouf's memoir of a childhood in the Middle East continues and it's great to have him back. I really think he could be the Marcel Proust of the illustrated form. Charming and subtle, The Arab of the Future opens a much-needed window onto the Syrian past. * Gary Perry, Foyles Staff Pick * The books in the graphic memoir series The Arab of the Future make me feel like a child about to read the new Harry Potter or see the new Star Wars film. I look forward to them with so much anticipation and read each new volume immediately... These books are such a joy to read for their lively and expressive drawings and engaging stories that present the author's wide-eyed innocent look at his cross-national childhood... This volume continues to give a fascinating view of what it was like growing up in a country under what's effectively a military dictatorship... Sattouf sensitively shows how the social imbalances and rigidly enforced moralities are a result of people living under a government regime which does not tolerate any different or dissident opinions that conflict with the prevailing order. I'm absolutely gripped now and can't wait to read the third volume of this striking and original memoir. * Lonesome Reader * The acclaim of recent years for the work of Alan Moore, Posy Simmonds, Joe Sacco, Neil Gaiman and others means the genre of the graphic novel no longer suffers the condescension of critics. It has left the countercultural ghetto and gone global. This second volume of Riad Sattouf's childhood memoir offers a fine example of its virtues... A more enjoyable introduction to understanding the everyday hopes and despairs of the Middle East's middle class is hard to imagine * Prospect * Since these larger contours repeat from the first volume, it's now easier to appreciate the cartoonist's ability to pick out peculiarities, marking out a character's whole persona and philosophy with the surgical shorthand of a practised caricaturist. His bit players are brilliant: merchants who haggle with lunatic abandon; the indignant girl, her face screwed up in demonic distortio

RIAD SATTOUF is a bestselling cartoonist and filmmaker who grew up in Syria and Libya and now lives in Paris. The author of four comics series in France and a former contributor to the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, Sattouf is now a weekly columnist for l'Obs. He also directed the films The French Kissers (winner of a Cesar Award for Best First Film) and Jacky in the Women's Kingdom. The Arab of the Future - which was awarded the Fauve d'Or Prize for Best Album of the Year at the Angouleme International Comics Festival and has been translated into twenty languages - is his first work to appear in English. riadsattouf.com @RiadSattouf