I tore through two volumes of The Arab of the Future... 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 *
I loved it
* Rachel Cooke, Observer Graphic Book of the Month *
Irresistible...
Exceptionally good art. * New York Times *
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 *
Excellent... The graphic novel has proved itself again and again. It already has its canon:
Art Spiegelman on the Holocaust,
Marjane Satrapi on girlhood in Islamist Iran, and, perhaps most accomplished of all,
Joe Sacco's
Footnotes in Gaza, a work of detailed and self-reflexive history.
Edging towards this company comes Riad Sattouf's childhood memoir of tyranny... It's this sort of detail, drawn with the cartoon clarity of childhood perception, that
makes the book such a success... The Arab of the Future is
an authentic, emotionally honest memoir, and much more
useful background reading for present events than a romanticised account of cosmopolitan, bourgeois Damascus would be. * 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 *
Not since Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir of revolutionary Iran,
has a comic book seemed so important, or been so acclaimed... There is a feeling that
the book throws some light both on the roots of the Arab spring, and what has happened since. In a country - and beyond it, a world - in which bewilderment and anxiety at recent events polarises communities as often as it unites them,
it has an authenticity with which no expert or talking head could ever hope to compete. * Observer *
If you know anyone who liked the first two volumes of Riad Sattouf's memoir
The Arab of the Future, the third has just been published and is
every bit as enjoyable as those that preceded it * Observer *
Expressively drawn, superbly observed and just the right amount of uneasy fun * Spectator *
God bless whatever Proustian madeleine spurred Riad Sattouf to put pen to paper for his The Arab of the Future series . . . truly fantastic * Vulture *
This is
the third instalment of Sattouf's childhood in Syria, a life that takes in hardship, religious repression and poverty. None of which stops it often being
laugh-out-loud funny. * Herald *
I really think Riad Sattouf 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...
A striking and original memoir * Lonesome Reader *
darker issues are presented in a way that allows you to feel the comic absurdity of the characters' egotism and insecurities . . . I eagerly await to discover what happens next in this
cleverly wrought graphic memoir! -- Lonesome Reader
