'My great grandmother was also living without water and electricity and taking care of the children while the men had all the power,' says Sattouf. Sattouf says Syrian rural life was probably not so different from the life his great grandparents lead in rural Brittany at the beginning of the 20th century. The story is punctuated with trips back to France to visit his maternal grandparents. 'To bring just one small vision and point of view and let the reader make his own judgment.' 'I prefer the truth of the experience, and that's what I tried to do in this book,' says Sattouf. Just his experience in a poor Syrian village. Sattouf says his book is not meant to be a general vision of the whole Arab world at the time. But another family moved into the author's home while he and his family were away.

'Because he was obsessed by the education of the Arab world and he wanted to give back the education he received.'Īn excerpt from The Arab of the Future about growing up in Libya in the 1980s, where housing was free. 'But he preferred to go to Libya and work for Gadhafi than go to Oxford,' he says.

Sattouf says his father could've taught anywhere. Through simple, expressive drawings and droll text, Sattouf tells his story, which begins with his Syrian father finishing up his doctorate in France. He has long been captivated with the secret world of young people. Sattouf used to draw for the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, but left last year, prior to the shooting terror attack this past January that left 12 dead. 'For me it's a dream to have a book in English,' he says, laughing. It's his first glimpse of it and he's thrilled. I met the cartoonist at his Paris publisher with a copy of the English edition of his book under my arm. His book is already a best-seller in France and is coming out in English in the U.S.

He lives in France now, but tapped into his youth for his graphic novel, The Arab of the Future, that explores life under Arab dictatorships a generation ago. Riad Sattouf is half-Syrian and half-French and grew up in the Middle East in the late 1970s and 1980s. His book was a bestseller in France and is now being published in English. Riad Sattouf is a Syrian-French cartoonist whose graphic novel depicts his life growing up in Syria and Libya in the 1980s.

The Arab of the Future by Riad Sattouf