Riad’s father, though by no means a hateful character, is the story’s foremost authoritarian, incapable of admitting ignorance or error, guilty of sectarianism, racism, misogyny and superstition. Mokhtar and Anas, his bullying cousins – Riad is related to everyone in the village – call him Yahudi (Jew) on account of his blonde shock of hair. The village boys are fascinated by Riad’s European toys, but kick a puppy about for fun.

Where the palette for Libya was yellow, and France is coded blue, Syria is illustrated in pink for its rich soil. It’s this sort of detail, drawn with the cartoon clarity of childhood perception, that makes the book such a success. Riad’s weathered grandmother licks specks from children’s eyeballs. Then to the ancestral village outside Homs, which is sexually segregated, afflicted by power cuts, soundtracked by howling dogs and calls to prayer. The bribery starts in the airport arrivals hall. Now one dictator’s portraits are replaced by another’s. A disturbed Abdel-Razak has already heard news of the 1982 massacre in Hama. When Gaddafi decrees that all must change jobs, teachers becoming farmers and vice versa, the family leaves, via France, for Syria, another country that “seemed to be under construction”. He sings the Leader’s speeches with other kids in the stairwell and queues with his mother for food (only eggs one week, just bananas the next). Little Riad sees Libya as all yellow, its unfinished buildings already crumbling.

The family takes up residence in a flat that doesn’t have a lock, because Gaddafi has “abolished private property”. For reasons of both vanity and ideology he turns down an Oxford teaching post for one in Libya. Abdel-Razak is a pan-Arabist who believes the people (“stupid filthy Arab retards!”) must be educated out of religious dogma.

L'Arabe du futur by Riad Sattouf