THIS IS THE only work by Sattouf I have seen; his jacket bio notes that he was a contributor to Charlie Hebdo, and I have no idea whether his work there was of the unbridled sort that publication was famous for. His line in this graphic memoir is fluid, clean, rubbery, and looks like it would easily lend itself to the more exaggerated kinds of satire, but his tone here is hardly that--what comes across most clearly is love for his family, even though the family's circumstances look difficult.
Sattouf's father is Syrian, his mother French; they met in France as students, and Sattouf was born there. His father, Abdel-Razak, with a Ph. D. in history, gets offered a position at Oxford, but the racism he encountered in France piques his Arab national feeling. Fascinated by Gaddafi, he brings his wife and toddler son to Libya--an experiment that does not pan out. They return to France, another child is born, then off to Syria.
The reunion in Syria with the father's family is bumpy. He has a running feud with his brother over how some property was managed in his absence, and the blonde Riad is called "Jew" by his cousins, who keep threatening him. Riad is afraid to go to school, expecting similar treatment from his schoolmates. Meanwhile, Abdel-Razak is getting a bit more nationalist and a bit more Muslim.
Volume 1 ends with a brief trip to France and an announcement that they are about to return to Syria.
Abdel-Razak dominates Volume 1. He's a complex character--affectionate, loyal, intelligent, passionate about what he believes in, not to mention a fun dad, but also emphatic about getting his own way, easily offended, blinkered in some ways. He's fascinating. Riad's mother--whose name I can't locate--is also intriguing. Also intelligent, but quiet, perhaps passive, apparently not putting up much resistance to Abdel-Razak's plans for the family, which sometimes seem misjudged.
The child's-eye view of Libyan and Syrian politics of the 1980s and of the differences between European and Arab societies is innocent in some ways, Riad tending to reflect his father's seemingly naïve enthusiasms, but at the same time Riad's sensitivity to the ominous is strong. "We...we're going back to Syria?" he asks in a tremulous speech balloon in the next-to-last panel; in the last, he trails his family, wide-eyed and anxiously sweating, as they board a jet.
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