A literary phenomenon whose albums have sold millions of copies, the comic book series The Arab of the futureby French author and filmmaker Riad Sattouf (The beautiful kids, 2009), sees its sixth and final volume arrive in bookstores in Quebec a few weeks after its publication in France. A conclusion, therefore, to a very personal story that the author will have taken almost 10 years (the first volume having been published in 2014) to tell us with humor and intelligence. It depicts a young Sattouf, child, teenager and now young adult, born to a Syrian father and a Breton mother.
This time, we follow Sattouf who studies cartoons at the prestigious Gobelins school, also taking his first steps in the world of comics and illustration against the background of the despair of his mother who has lost her young son, Fadi, kidnapped by his father and forced to live in Syria.
On the sidelines of the Quebec publication of this conclusion, we were able to talk to the author, and the first question we wanted to ask him was whether he felt relieved, or sad, to have finished with this story.
“It’s complicated and I haven’t yet found a completely satisfactory answer. It’s true that I finished it not long ago because there was little time between when it [l’album] was finished and the moment it ended up in bookstores; barely a month and a half, it was really very fast. I admit, therefore, that I have not yet had the time to fully realize. One thing is certain, it is that when I started, I knew exactly where I was going to arrive, which is the end of volume six, which we will not reveal. But it’s true that I didn’t really measure the duration of the journey. I didn’t think it would take me six albums, for example. I did not think that I would take all these cross roads. »
father figure
There have been some criticisms, here and there, of the view of the Arab world, and of Syria in particular, as offered by this series. Especially when it comes to the character of the father, when we finally understand, when we have read everything, that his problem does not come so much from his origins, but rather from what he is as an individual.
” It is complicated. But, it is true that the character of the father is a paradoxical and ambivalent character in the sense that he both came from a very modest background and he had managed to progress socially thanks to education, which he venerated . He subscribed to pan-Arabism and, at the same time, he was completely far-right in the sense that he was fascinated by dictators. He dreamed of making a coup d’etat, he thought that people were not made for freedom and that as soon as they were given the right to vote, they would vote for the most stupid and those who made ridiculous promises to them . So he had this paradox in him which is the center of what I also wanted to tell in this book. Now, I am not offering you a general vision of the Arab world or the modern world. Any generalization is still a simplification and generally fails, I find. But hey, that’s a personal opinion. »
Well, it’s a complex world, built from several visions and which is not as monolithic as one would like to believe. ” It is true that The Arab of the future, it is the point of view of a small child on his father, on a precise place, in a precise moment of the history. I let the reader make up his own mind. It is not an overall analysis of a situation. »
A very strange effect
In this sixth volume, Riad Sattouf also recounts his psychotherapy. Did he feel like he went through a bit of the same process when telling his own story? What did he learn about him?
“I know that the story I’m telling here, the story of my family, the story of the tragedy that happened with my brother, it didn’t interest anyone for decades. We stayed in our family with that, without the possibility of doing anything. And it’s true that the fact of having told it, of having transformed it into a comic strip, allowed me above all to give it a meaning and that meaning, to share it with readers so that they finally understand, and it’s very amazing to me. I come from a very religious family, in religion, but also in what is paranormal. All my life, I wanted to see a ghost, witness something supernatural. But what is truly strange and magical is the success of The Arab of the future, when I meet people who know my own family’s history better than I do and it has a very strange effect on me. So, I gave meaning to a story that for a long time was a bit incomprehensible to me. »
Ten years later
As mentioned earlier, this series represents almost 10 years in the life of its author. What has changed in him since the beginning? Has the drawing improved? Would he like to retouch certain albums?
” It’s a good question ! It is true that from time to time, there are readers who can point out small mistakes or spelling mistakes, etc. So, as the reissues progress, I change some things. Afterwards, it’s true that this sixth volume, it was produced in a rather particular way because the first five, I built them by trying to say. Being very careful. I first made a precut of the books based on small sketches, etc. I put it in a binder, I had my trusted reader friends read it. Once I had this finished penciled version, I went back to drawing everything from the beginning in ink. »
It is true that from time to time, there are readers who can point out small mistakes or spelling mistakes, etc. So, as the reissues progress, I change some things.
“For this sixth volume, what happened was that at the start of the year, I broke my right arm and I was five months behind on all my albums. So, I was led to work this one in a completely different way, that is to say, I drew it in ink, directly, without construction, without any preparation. In fact, I did it chapter by chapter and delivered it to the publisher almost in its final state. I said to myself, precisely, as I like surrealist comics, and there is a lot of talk about dreams and nocturnal fear in this one, I said to myself that I was going to open the door to the “unconscious ” and that I was going to see what happens when I make a comic almost in automatic writing. I was surprised precisely by the fact that, even when you don’t really try to construct a comic strip, it erects itself a bit. A part of ourselves created it in spite of ourselves. »
Built or not in spite of its author, the fact remains that The Arab of the future remains a major and essential work, in which its author manages to touch a part of our humanity, whatever our origin or our history. History that could, you never know, be revisited in twenty years? “I don’t know, we’ll see. See you in 20 years…”