The Sattouf family lands in Tripoli in 1978. It has been almost a decade since Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi took power and three years since the publication of the first volume of the Green Book, which presents his “vision of society.” The country resembles a construction site, with many buildings in states of repair or disrepair. Pictures of the Brother Leader in military uniform and sunglasses hang everywhere. From this point forward, the story relies on Riad’s perception of the family’s experiences in Libya, even though he was only a toddler at the time. We are being given not memories but reconstructions of memories, whose sources are unclear.

The little house issued to the family by the government is unexpectedly taken over by squatters. Ration lines are long, the food is unappealing and the people smell terrible. Abdel-Razak settles down to reading the Green Book and enthusiastically agrees with many of its proclamations. Still, when Qaddafi announces that farmers and teachers will swap jobs, ­Abdel-Razak decides to move his family back to France.

Sadly, the reprieve is short. Abdel-Razak gets another job, this time in Syria. Like all exiles and immigrants, he returns home dreaming of glory. But Syria under Hafez al-Assad is its own nightmare. There too a cult of personality persists. There too everything is in disrepair. And there too little Riad finds the food unappetizing, the people strange. He has to contend with bullies, who tease him about his blond hair and call him yahudi (Jew) by way of insult. Yet rather than resist, the boy’s father makes accommodations.

The portrait Riad Sattouf draws of ­Abdel-Razak is far from flattering. Despite his education, he comes across as naïve, boorish and not particularly bright. He eats with his mouth open, spouts racist comments and fantasizes about plotting a coup d’état. What rescues him from being the cliché of the Arab brute — and ­barely — is a good-luck token he takes with him everywhere, a plastic toy bull. From country to country, Abdel-Razak unpacks his toy bull and puts it on top of the television. With that small gesture, he allows us to see a side of his personality that illuminates his contradictions.

A former cartoonist for the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, Riad Sattouf has created an exhaustive catalog of his father’s weaknesses. His drawings are more precise than those of Marjane Satrapi and less stylized than those of Zeina Abirached, who each mined similar material in “Persepolis” and “A Game for Swallows.” And Sattouf writes in a fluid prose, beautifully translated by Sam Taylor, that makes “The Arab of the Future” engrossing to read. One hopes that the next volume of this memoir will shed some light not just on the political passions of the Sattouf family but on its personal dynamics.