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Persepolis #1-2

Persepolis. The story of a childhood

marjane satrapi mattias ripa

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In powerful black-and-white comic strip images, Satrapi tells the story of her life in Tehran from ages six to fourteen, years that saw the overthrow of the Shah’s regime, the triumph of the Islamic Revolution, and the devastating effects of war with Iraq. The intelligent and outspoken only child of committed Marxists and the great-granddaughter of one of Iran’s last emperors, Marjane bears witness to a childhood uniquely entwined with the history of her country.

Persepolis paints an unforgettable portrait of daily life in Iran and of the bewildering contradictions between home life and public life. Marjane’s child’s-eye view of dethroned emperors, state-sanctioned whippings, and heroes of the revolution allows us to learn as she does the history of this fascinating country and of her own extraordinary family. Intensely personal, profoundly political, and wholly original, Persepolis is at once a story of growing up and a reminder of the human cost of war and political repression. It shows how we carry on, with laughter and tears, in the face of absurdity. And, finally, it introduces us to an irresistible little girl with whom we cannot help but fall in love.

153 pages, Paperback

First published April 29,2003
Series
Persepolis
Literary awards
harvey awards, ala alex award, prix du festival dangoulême, 
Places
tehran, persia, iran, middle east, 

This edition

Format
153 pages, Paperback
Published
June 1, 2004 by Pantheon
ISBN
9780375714573
ASIN
037571457X
Language
English

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About the author

Profile Image for marjane satrapi

marjane satrapi

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Marjane Satrapi (Persian: مرجان ساتراپی) is an Iranian-born French contemporary graphic novellist, illustrator, animated film director, and children's book author. Apart from her native tongue Persian, she speaks English, Swedish, German, French and Italian.

Satrapi grew up in Tehran in a family which was involved with communist and socialist movements in Iran prior to the Iranian Revolution. She attended the Lycée Français there and witnessed, as a child, the growing suppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ruhollah Khomeini, and the first years of the Iran-Iraq War. She experienced an Iraqi air raid and Scud missile attacks on Tehran. According to Persepolis, one Scud hit the house next to hers, killing her friend and entire family.

Satrapi's family are of distant Iranian Azeri ancestry and are descendants of Nasser al-Din Shah, Shah of Persia from 1848 until 1896. Satrapi said that "But you have to know the kings of the Qajar dynasty, they had hundreds of wives. They made thousands of kids. If you multiply these kids by generation you have, I don't know, 10-15,000 princes [and princesses]. There's nothing extremely special about that." She added that due to this detail, most Iranian families would be, in the words of Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, "blue blooded."

In 1983, at the age of 14 Satrapi was sent to Vienna, Austria by her parents in order to flee the Iranian regime. There she attended the Lycée Français de Vienne. According to her autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis, she stayed in Vienna through her high school years, staying in friends' homes, but spent three months living on the streets. After an almost deadly bout of pneumonia, she returned to Iran. She studied Visual Communication, eventually obtaining a Master's Degree from Islamic Azad University in Tehran.

During this time, Satrapi went to numerous illegal parties hosted by her friends, where she met a man named Reza, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq War. She married him at the age of 21, but divorced roughly three years later. Satrapi then moved to Strasbourg, France.

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Rating(4 / 5.0, 98 votes)
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98 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
bus_schedule
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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Romanian review: Pot spune că Persepolis a fost o surpriză pentru mine— nu mă așteptam să-mi placă chiar atât de mult, dar m-am înșelat. Acest roman grafic atinge teme de actualitate, destul de profunde, într-un mod original și ingenios.
În acest volum, autoarea, Marjane Satrapi, își povestește copilăria din timpul Revoluției din 1979 din Iran și din timpul Primului Război din Golf, concentrându-se mai ales pe schimbările sociale provocate de transformarea Iranului într-o republică islamică.
Cartea este foarte emoționantă și tristă, dar are și scurte momente comice (copiii tot copii rămân, la urma urmei). Momentul meu preferat a fost, categoric, cel în care Marji pune într-un vas pământ din gradină— pământ iranian— pentru că urma să plece să studieze în Viena.
Într-un fel, cartea prezintă și conflictul interior între a rămâne în țara ta, sperând la mai bine, sau a pleca într-o țară străină. Sper ca volumul 2 să fie măcar la fel de bun!



English review: I can say that Persepolis was a pleasant surprise for me—I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did, but I was wrong. This graphic novel tackles current and profound themes in an original and ingenious way.
In this volume, the author, Marjane Satrapi, recounts her childhood during the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War, focusing particularly on the social changes brought about by Iran's transformation into an Islamic Republic.
The book is deeply emotional and heartbreaking, yet it also has brief moments of humor (kids will always be kids, after all). My favorite moment, without a doubt, was when Marji puts soil from her garden—Iranian soil—into a jar, because she’s about to leave to study in Vienna.
In a way, the book also reflects the internal conflict between staying in your home country, hoping for better days, or leaving for a foreign land. I hope the second volume is at least as good!

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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Matihzz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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First read for #getgraphic! I don’t know how many times I’ve re-read these books but they are so damn good and important especially with the disgusting attitudes that people have exhibited towards Iranians. Definitely worth a read if you’ve never heard of them.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Gazz
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I am as middle class (we call it affectionately, the "poor rich" where I live.) I am intellectual. I am like Richard Rodriquez and bellhooks because education took me away from my roots, but gave me who I am today.

So, how could Iranian middle class intellectuals and professionals in the late 1970s have been so different than me and my family? For the young, under the Shah, there was a strong and progressive, very Western group of middle class Iranians. Just like me and mine.

So, how could these people have allowed the "revolution" in Iran to become a "devolution?" The question bothered me all the time. Under the Raygun (Reagan)administration I entertained the possibility that I would have to emigrate for political reasons (ha, and let's just say the thought has cropped up again recently.)

How was America different from Iran -- no, that is too broad a way to state it. The question on my mind was how does your country become totalitarian, authoritarian, repressive -- and you still live there and didn't resist?

Read Persepolis to find out. Yes, it is a girl's growing up story. Yes, it isn't really about the parents. But when you read it, you can see that great evil can just sneak its way into your life because it comes just a babystep at a time.

No, the Iranian intellectuals and professionals were not very different from their American counterparts. There is a lesson there, and I hope we learn it before it is too late for us.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Subsz_1
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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We complain about the religious fanatics in this country, and definitely we should keep an eye on them, because man oh man, things sure could be worse.

I liked this. It was cute but in a substantial way, interesting, and emotionally compelling. Satrapi made a point of representing her childhood self as kind of an asshole in a realistic and endearing little-kid way, which I thought was cool and served the book well. In a lot of stories about political repression the heroes are saintly people, but she and her family were so much like my own family and people I know that I got a much better sense of what it would be like to have religious wingnuts running my country. The descriptions of growing up amidst the political turmoil and repression and the war of 70s/80s Iran were effective because the characters seemed so real and familiar. I've been reading a lot about Iran during this era, but embarrassingly this is the first thing I've read from an Iranian perspective. Hope to read more and definitely would love some suggestions.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Chabit
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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It's hard for me not to compare this with Maus, since they're both memoirs that despite taking place in different historical periods and in different countries, somehow managed to inflict on me the same sadness and the same sense of helplessness. I guess tragedy and history rarely change, only people and how we react to it.

Persepolis is a gorgeous book, the illustrations are beautiful in their simplicity and manage to convey such a wide array of emotions. My only complaint is that the book felt too chaotic, which is probably me expecting a fiction format from a non-fiction book. Life is chaotic, so I don't know how valid that complaint is. Either way, I just couldn't let myself give it 5 star despite liking it a lot.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
Bebewiski
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
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I jumped into this having only a shred of knowledge on Iran and the revolution. I thought my general political ignorance would leave me out of sorts here, confused and humiliated. It wasn’t so; Satrapi has painted an excellent depiction of the regime, giving us some political frames of reference, but focusing mainly on what was important - the people affected.

Growing up as the regime was taking hold, Satrapi witnessed and experienced a number of things you’d never wish on a young girl. We see how these events shape her and her relationships with others, her propensity for rebellion never wavering. She has truly created a masterpiece in black and white, showing fear and joy juxtaposed within her panels.

She begins as an easily influenced child, and we see her grow into a well-informed and knowledgable woman, self-aware and assured, completely secure in her aspirations and desires. The journey we take with her to get there is something I can’t put into words; really, I am too much of a simpleton to even attempt it.

Satrapi makes sure to reinforce that her family was far from poverty stricken, and were quite wealthy in comparison to others at the time. The horrors she experienced must be somewhat diluted in contrast to those of her poorer neighbours, and she’s beautiful enough to make this clear, a constant shadow looming behind her pictures and words.

I’ve taken something quite stark and humbling away from this, and that is that I am very privileged never to have seen war. I’ve seen it on television, from afar, from my comfortable Western home where no one wants to bomb us, and no one wants to arrest me for having a few wisps of hair showing. Satrapi has shown me the true face of war, and yet I can still only imagine. It’s not quite so much a feeling of being lucky, as a feeling of being in an incredibly revered position in the world.

A wonderfully raw memoir which I can’t quite put into words, only urge others to read.

n  n
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