Riad Sattouf is an acclaimed graphic novelist and filmmaker. His works often delve into the intricacies of adolescence, social dynamics, and the complexities of human relationships, rendered with keen observation and distinctive humor. Sattouf's artistic approach is marked by its candidness and its ability to capture the essence of everyday life.
Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf has a chat with his friend’s daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, about school, her friends, her hopes, dreams and fears, and then he works it up into a comic strip.This book consists of 52 of those strips, telling between them the story of a year in the life of this sharp, spirited and funny child. The result is a moving, insightful and utterly addictive glimpse into the real lives of children growing up in today’s world.
Every week, the comic book artist Riad Sattouf has a chat with his friend’s daughter, Esther. She tells him about her life, about school, her friends, her hopes, dreams and fears, and then he works it up into a comic strip.This book consists of 52 of those strips, telling between them the story of a year in the life of this sharp, spirited and hilarious child. The result is a moving, insightful and utterly addictive glimpse into the real lives of children growing up in today’s world.
From the author of The Arab of the Future, the first book in a bestselling series of graphic novels following the life of a real girl growing up in Paris - hilarious, tearjerking and painfully true.
Cartoonist Riad Sattouf tells of the first years of his childhood as his family shuttles back and forth between France and the Middle East. In Libya and Syria, young Riad is exposed to the dismal reality of a life where food is scarce, children kill dogs for sport, and his cousins, virulently anti-Semitic and convinced he is Jewish because of his blond hair, lurk around every corner waiting to beat him up. In volume 2, Riad, now settled in his fathers hometown of Horms, gets to go to school, where he dedicates himself to becoming a true Syrian in the country of the dictator Hafez Al-Assad. Told simply yet with devastating effect, Riads story takes in the sweep of politics, religion, and poverty, but is steered by acutely observed small moments: the daily sadism of his schoolteacher, the lure of the black market, with its menu of shame and subsistence, and the obsequiousness of his father in the company of those close to the regime. As family strains to fit in, on chilling, barbaric act drives the Sattoufs to make the most dramatic of changes. Darkly funny and piercingly direct. The Arab of the Future, Volume 2 once again reveals the inner workings of a tormented country and a tormented family, delivered through Riad Saffoufs dazzlingly original talent
Young Riad is now a teenager and the tension between his two cultures - French and Syrian - fuling gis parents' conflict reaches a breaking point. Riad's father, Abdel-Razak, leaves to ork in Saudi Arabia and, after making the pilgrimage to Mecca, turns toward religion; Riad, in France, turns instead to his new discoveries - grils and Tom Cruise. Clementine, Riad's mother, is finally happy, back in a country where women have rights... Until Abdel-Razak shows up, leading the family on yet another journey, one that culminates in an act of unfathomable pain.
