The Arab of the Future 4: A Graphic Memoir of a Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992 by Riad Sattouf Review

This is the fourth book in Riad Sattouf’s childhood memoir series The Arab of the Future and it’s my least favourite volume so far.

A lot of the first half of the book feels repetitive. Riad, his mother and little brothers are in France with his grandparents while his dad is in Saudi Arabia teaching (the money is too good to pass up but his mother doesn’t want to live in such a backwards country so this is the arrangement), then they’re back in Syria again to see his father’s ailing mother. It’s more of what we’ve seen in the previous three books without much to add to it.

Poor Riad gets bullied wherever he is, in a French or Syrian school, discovers unrequited love for his older cousin, becomes recognised for his burgeoning artistic talent, and gets his hair cut like Tom Cruise (it was the ‘80s). His mother undergoes cancer treatment and his father becomes more pious while in Saudi Arabia, which only exacerbates his obnoxiously bigoted anti-semitic/racist views.

It’s not much and I was underwhelmed for the most part. Still, Sattouf is really good at characterisation and I loved his portraits of his family. His regretful French grandmother who feels she wasted her life, her loving second husband (Riad’s “step” grandfather?), who consoles her by complimenting her cooking and buying her a puppy - they’re such a sweet couple.

And, as hard to read as some of the garbage his dad spews is, Riad’s father remains the star of the show and the book was always more entertaining and energetic whenever he was around.

The book is really about the deterioration of Riad’s parent’s marriage. The long-distance doesn’t help but his father’s crazy behaviour, brought about by his newfound religiousness, is what finally ends things. While I wasn’t that taken with quite a bit of the book, that final fifty or so pages is really gripping and ends on quite the cliffhanger for the next volume.

The Arab of the Future 4: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1987-1992 is definitely the weakest episode in this otherwise superb series but there’s still enough here for it to be worth reading, and I hope the momentum of that finale carries over into a better fifth book.