In the backdrop of this hilarious graphic novel about an 8-year old Syrian boy dreading his upcoming circumcision is a very serious look into a Middle Eastern childhood, from corporal punishment in schools to public executions to the rampant hatred and mistrust of Israel.

A young Riad Sattouf, the blond-haired son of an Arab man and a French mother, lives in Ter Maaleh, a small town in Syria. When the boy’s cousins notice that he is uncircumcised and tease him about it, he begins to doubt whether he is a true Cimmerian. His insecurity is only exacerbated when friends begin excluding him from their group and accuse him of being an Israeli, all because his penis doesn’t look like a “mushroom.” He brings up his worries to his father, who assures him that he’s normal, though eventually decides to set a date for his son’s circumcision. Thus begins a three-month period of extreme anxiety, as the young boy, desperately scraping together all the information he can from his woefully misinformed friends, tyrannical schoolteacher and reticent father, tries to discover just what kind of terrifying procedure he has gotten himself into. That the circumciser ends up being the “only Syrian to resemble Arnold Schwarzennegger” doesn’t exactly assuage his fears. Nevertheless, he soldiers on, buoyed by his father’s promise to buy him a giant action toy after the operation. After a painful infection, a toy that never appears, and the realization that Jews in fact are circumcised as well, the significance of his new identity as a circumcised Syrian (“Now I’m a real Cimmerian”) is cast into even more doubt.

As the introductory note (addressed to circumcised and uncircumcised readers alike) reads: “This book tells a true story set in a country whose totalitarian regime locks children into only one mode of thought….This book is not meant to incite racial hatred, but is rather an account of the way in which a society fabricates that hatred.”