Arab of the Future, Classic Literature Masquerading as Comics

Last month, I finished reading the 6th and final book in the graphic novel series, L’Arabe du futur, by Riad Sattouf. Every volume of this autobiographical bande dessinée has been a bestseller in France and translated into over 20 languages. Sattouf, whose mother is French and father is Syrian, zigzagged his way through childhood, moving between his parents’ respective homelands as well as Libya. Much of his story is dysfunctional, cruel, and disappointing while at the same time tender, resilient, and lighthearted. To most Westerners, Sattouf’s life is full of unfamiliar and unexpected circumstances. Yet, his sparsely-rendered frames yield a world that is irresistibly relatable.

Throughout the series, the cultural dissonance causing tensions between Sattouf’s parents is bitterly exacerbated by the dissimilar societies in which his family tries to settle. Somehow Sattouf manages to wrap his tumultuous upbringing in a rib-tickling coating of humor. L’Arab du futur is not only a fun and fascinating graphic memoir, it’s a masterpiece. Indeed, most of its volumes (released between 2014 and 2022), have outsold that year’s winner of the Prix Goncourt (France’s equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize for literature).

Subtle Intensity

Each volume of L’Arabe du futur spans a different period from Sattouf’s youth and begins with a self-portrait. Sattouf’s storylines gently make fun of people from his past. No one is spared from his keen dissection of their quirks and failings, including Sattouf himself who reveals his deepest anxieties and deprecates his many strengths. These opening autoportraits underpin the events that will follow as told through the eyes of the child who experienced them.

As Riad grows from toddler to school-aged kid to college student, his perceptions of the world change. He retains, however, a certain level of naivité such that the reader is always aware of a bigger reality than the central character seems to be.

In the self-portrait above from volume 2, Sattouf describes his most notable traits (clockwise from upper left):

• The blond hair of a California actress as it blows in the wind
• Appears a little too sure of his charm
• Voice of a little girl
• Laces tied by his darling mother
• Must work hard to not cry when he falls down

The back cover informs the reader that this volume encompasses Sattouf’s early years of going to school in Syria. Already, with just a thimble full of information, the scene is set for a host of high jinks and cultural mishaps.

Artistic Phoenix or Mollusk?

I have to admit that initially, I wasn’t a big fan of Sattouf’s illustrative style despite the fact that he took years to perfect it. From a very young age, Sattouf dreamed of producing his own bandes dessinées and there were a handful of adults in his life who recognized and encouraged his artistic leanings. Yet, by the time he was enrolled in a French high school, the odds of success seemed stacked against him.

Barely passing in several classes, Sattouf was plagued with a scourge of social, familial, and all-too-real headaches. His parents had divorced and his father, Abel, had kidnapped his youngest brother, Fadi, and fled to Syria. Sattouf’s mother Clementine, who suffered from depression, was understandably obsessed with recovering her youngest of three sons. She regularly enlisted Riad to talk to his father in an effort to coerce the return of Fadi. But Abdel was fixated on his two oldest sons abandoning their mother. The only future he was willing to acknowledge was one where all of his children joined him in Syria, received a religious education, and attended medical school.

When Sattouf’s maternal grandfather, however, agreed to pay the tuition required to attend a private art school in Nantes, his energies were reinvigorated. He buckled down, passed his high school exams, and the baccalauréat—required to attend university in France.

Unfortunately, Sattouf’s grandfather died two years into his 3-year art program. Without funding to continue, he applied to a public fine arts school in Rennes and was accepted.

At the same time, however, Sattouf learned of the Gobelins animation school in Paris whose graduates were purportedly snatched up by Steven Spielberg and guaranteed employment in Hollywood. Out of 2500 candidates competing for a scholarship, only 25 would be accepted. Sattouf claims he turned out to be a terrible animator but he gained one of those 25 seats and, after two more years of superhuman effort, earned a diploma from Gobelins.

Sophisticated Simplicity

While Sattouf’s tuition was covered by a scholarship, he was on his own to pay for living expenses in Paris. Although desperate for money, he was only interested in work that would allow him to advance his comics career. While still in school, he landed his first serious contract as the illustrator of a new bande dessinée called Petit Verglas. The semi-realistic style required by the publisher did not come easily for Sattouf who, working evenings after school, took 2 weeks to produce each page for which he was paid 1,100 francs (less than $200/page).

That first volume of Petit Verglas, however, was a commercial success and Sattouf went on to illustrate the rest of the 3-volume series.

Similar jobs followed but Sattouf’s ultimate goal was to author and illustrate his own series, using his own artistic style. He admired the clear-line graphics of artists like Hergé, author of Tintin, and Claire Bretécher. Eventually, he gained enough street cred by copying other people’s styles that comics magazine publishers began allowing him to develop his own strips.

The simplicity of Sattouf’s drawings has grown on me over time. Each scene is boiled down to its essence and yet the details that Sattouf chooses to include, along with nuanced facial expressions speak volumes. There’s a wizardry behind both his writing and drawing that yields a world rich with meaning and insinuation.

Drawing Omnipresence

Volume 6 of L’Arabe du Futur, begins in 1994 while Sattouf is still in high school and ends in 2011, shortly after the author received the prize for best album of 2010 at the Angoulême International Comics Festival. Sattouf’s father, Abdel, is absent from everyday life. Yet, his religiously conservative and critical voice remains omnipresent in a corner of the young Riad’s anxiety-ridden mind. Sattouf depicts Abdel’s imagined and ongoing commentary within a red bubble in many of the frames.

While all of the volumes of L’Arabe du futur are personal, book 6 shows the author at his most vulnerable. Possibly because adolescence and early adulthood are naturally rife with insecurity and confusion. In an interview with franceinfo:Culture Sattouf says that in this final book of the series he wanted to show how he became the person he is today despite his shortcomings and exceptional challenges. Another objective was to demonstrate the strength of his father’s influence, which endured for years, even after he lived thousands of miles away.

The reader recognizes Abel’s weaknesses, failures, and impotence long before the 20-something Riad—after years of psychoanalysis—realizes he’s no longer plagued by his father’s commentary. At this point in the book, the inner voice bubble turns white and is thereafter inhabited only by Riad.

Controversy

Certainly, L’Arabe du futur has its detractors. So far, it has never been picked up by an Arab publisher nor been translated into Arabic. Yet, Sattouf regularly hears from Muslim readers living in the Middle East and elsewhere who adore his portrayals. If history is any indicator, I suspect that he also receives a fair number of menacing threats from Islamic fundamentalists. But in interviews, Sattouf remains positive, and little if anything has been written about extremists seeking to silence him.

Surprisingly, Sattouf’s most vocal critics have come from Western sources. In the early 2000s, publisher Bréal Jeunesse published Sattouf’s first two autobiographical bandes dessinées. After receiving numerous complaints from Catholic associations, France’s Commission of Surveillance and Control of Publications Intended for Children and Adolescents summoned Sattouf for a hearing. They objected to what they considered to be Sattouf’s negative portrayal of fathers, his advancement of racist attitudes, and obscenity (one book features the story of Sattouf’s school-age circumcision).

The attempt at censorship backfired by attracting far more attention to the then-unknown author than might otherwise have occurred. When journalists at Charlie Hebdo heard about the affair, they contacted Sattouf and offered him a job. The result was a regular strip that appeared in the satirical weekly from 2004 until 2012. Penetrating Innocence

While L’Arab du Futur paints a harsh picture of life in Syria and Libya, it also reveals universal aspects of human existence: the controlling influences of loving parents, the emancipating admiration of grandparents, the fear of facing the first day in a new school, cousins and siblings that are both rivals and fierce defenders, adolescent concerns about attractiveness and sexuality, the desire to be accepted by others, … the list goes on.

Certain scenes may be upsetting for some readers. l’Arabe du futur tackles many sensitive topics such as animal abuse, bullying, and depression. When portrayed through the eyes of a child, however, these unfortunate realities become approachable—even for people who normally avoid uncomfortable or controversial subject matter.

Middle Eastern cultures are not the only target here. Sattouf pokes plenty of fun at France and French people. His mockery, however, is uniformly lighthearted and endearing. He’s an equal-opportunity satirist and claims that he is racist or has a pro-west agenda don’t ring true. Instead, Sattouf is mindfully presenting his own unique and colorful history.

At age 45, Sattouf has proven himself to be a master creator. In addition to the 26 books that he’s both authored and illustrated, he has written and directed 6 animated films and now runs his own publishing company. After the release of the final book of L’Arabe du futur, many interviewers asked Sattouf what lay ahead. “Now that [the series] is finished, I can finally begin my life as a true author.” I for one am thrilled to know that Sattouf has no intention of slowing down.