Riad Sattouf, _The Arab of the Future 2: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1984-1985, trans. Sam Taylor

EVEN BETTER THAN the first volume. The standard for graphic memoirs has gotten high in the last couple of decades, but the way this one is shaping up, it can stand alongside Spiegelman, Bechdel, and Satrapi.

Volume Two takes place almost entirely in Syria, with one chapter for a visit to France. Young Riad, still cherubically blonde, starts school, with the first week devoted to learning the national anthem, and finds out the hard way that corporal punishment is a routine element in a Syrian classroom. He also learns to read, in both Arabic (helpfully illustrated) and in French (thanks to Tintin).

 Riad's French mother is showing the stress of the constraints and deprivations of Syrian village life, but his Syrian father has ambitions--the building of a luxury village on some land he owns--that will require staying put. He keeps angling for the support of those in his family who are well-connected, without much apparent success. From Riad's perspective, the situation of these family success stories does not seem so enviable; their houses are palatial but mostly empty and badly built, the plaster already cracking. The cousins of his own generation that he meets are demons.

One exception is Leila, daughter of Riad's father's much older half-sister. Leila, recently widowed, is back living with her family. She encourages Riad's interest in drawing (Dad wants him to be a doctor)  and gives him quick lessons in perspective. Tragically, she is the victim of an honor-killing. The Sattouf clan decide to turn the killers, Leila\s father and brother, over to the aurhorities, but the authorities find that, well, honor is honor, and release the murderers after three months. The village sees the killers as upholders of traditional values, the Sattouf clan as "weak."

 Last panel: Riad, his mother, and his little brother look aghast as the freed filicide father ambles down the road, free as a bird, dementedly mumbling "Ahh, that's good." Time to leave Ter Maaleh, everyone seems to be thinking, save Dad.