A Child in the Middle East

© PHOTOPQR/LE PARISIEN

This story about Riad Sattouf's graphic memoir, The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East, 1978-1984, begins with the perfect quote: "When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished." It's by Polish poet and writer Czesław Miłosz (1911-2004; about whom, btw, the gleefully controversial Christopher Hitchens wrote a great memorial years ago: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/fighting_words/2004/08/the_captive_mind_now.html). But more than Sattouf's family seems to be on stage here. By writing from the guileless point of view of a child, then teen as he moves with his parents through France, Libya, France again, Syria, France again, he is able to spotlight the dangerous absurdities of politics and the adult world. Small wonder that this child, this teen became the sole Arab contributor to Charlie Hebdo: https://newrepublic.com/article/123175/charlie-hebdo-cartoonists-childhood-middle-east