Ease Reading-Find Your Next Favorite Book

Hot Search

Persepolis #1

Persepolis, Volume 1

marjane satrapi

... Show More
Première bande dessinée issue de l'Iran, Persepolis de Marjane Satrapi a été la révélation que l'on sait. La chute du Shah, la révolution islamique et l'exil vécus par une fillette de dix ans, qui choisit vingt ans plus tard la bande dessinée pour livrer son histoire.

76 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,2000
Series
Persepolis
Places
tehran, 

This edition

Format
76 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 2000 by L'Association
ISBN
9782844140586
ASIN
2844140580
Language
French

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for marjane satrapi

marjane satrapi

... Show More
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.

Readers also enjoyed

Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 99 votes)
5 stars
35(35%)
4 stars
37(37%)
3 stars
27(27%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Joomillion
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
What was the title of the book?
Persepolis

Who was the author of the book?
Marjane Satrapi

What genre was the book?
Graphic Novel/Biography

Who were the main characters in the book?
Marjane and her family


What was the main conflict in the book?
Marjane’s country is on the brink of war with another country



Give a brief summary of the book you completed. Be sure to include the beginning, climax and resolution from the book (if applicable).
Marjane believed she was a prophet as a child but when her uncle gets executed for being a spy she stops believing in god and doesn’t believe she’s a child prophet no more. Fast forward to her teen years Her country's on the brink of war with another country.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Silent-_-Scream
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
Me ha parecido una lectura muy refrescante, abierta a responder muchas malas interpretaciones que tenemos sobre las costumbres, leyes y problemas que se han dando en Irán. Muy buen estilo gráfico, limpio y adictivo a querer seguir leyendo.

Muy bien narrada y con un dibujo efectivo y limpio. No sabía absolutamente nada de lo que aquí contado. La historia de Persia, sus guerras y conflictos, tradiciones y costumbres... lo que es una muy buena manera de documentarte sobre un pueblo del que, tristemente, Occidente ignora y el fundamentalismo religioso a doblegado.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
313_Archer
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
Read this time for my Graphic Novels class with memoir work by her and Alison Bechdel and Corinne Mucha. This is deceptively good, in that it is a graphic memoir from the perspective of a woman looking back at her life as a young girl during the Iranian Revolution, in 1979. Why deceptive? Because it's in the form of a slightly cartoony comic book that one could mistake for trivial, at a glance. It's not in the least bit trivial. It's interesting to read this during the time of the continuing 2015 Charlie Hebdo story in Paris, where Satrapi now lives. Her liberal and relatively well-off family in Iran did not support the use of the veil, she makes fun of it with her friends in various ways in the book, and now she lives in a city that bans the veil though she does not support that ban. Lots of layers going on here. Complicated, or parts of it are complicated. Maybe all of it is, I don't know.

The book was banned by Lane Tech Middle School a few years ago in Chicago for showing images of torture to 7th graders some parents felt were too graphic for that age group. I didn't think those images were very graphic, even for 7th graders, but I also have been working with Sarah Donovan who wrote a dissertation on the importance of teaching genocide literature to middle schoolers, which she does and does amazingly. I do think I would not read Persepolis with my elementary school kids, so I myself have lines I wouldn't yet cross, but on the whole I side against the book censorers in this and most any other case, of course.

What makes the book work in spite of some pretty disturbing details from her life is that the style is quite stylized and cartoony, and it's a story told in terms of a little girl, mostly, so it sort of mutes the effect of the fundamentalist siege in a way rather than amplifies it. We see it from her point of view rather than from, say, her mother's point of view. Or her uncle's. But bad things happen to her family and the country, things that the world were aware of through the news at the time, and she specifies these things. It's one story of fundamentalism and fascism that we are still dealing with today and its useful to see her version of it, and useful to see that it is banned in various places while taking what seems to me a fairly uncontroversial perspective on these events.We have history book accounts no one probably knows about in this country at all anymore, so this personal account introduces a new generation to these events.

But I can see why (f not justify) the book was and is being banned by some countries/political groups, because it does take a political position that may be unpopular for some, and that's just what people do when they disagree with stuff, they ban it, which is very useful for worldwide book sales, of course. One of my Iranian-American students once told me she hated it because it was so one-sidedly against the Shah. But for me it is still powerful to read. And much different than what Satrapi deals with in what seems to me a less satisfying second volume of her story.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
snjeguzica
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
I love graphic novels and learning about history and I feel like this book taught me a lot about what it was like to live through the Islamic Revolution.

I was frustrated at times because I felt like I didn't get the full story on a lot of the issues, and that they left things unresolved. Though, I suppose that's the way that things occur in real life!

The drawing wasn't particularly my style.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Azriah23
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
Llegué a la historia (hermosa y tremenda) de Marjane Satrapi, porque mi tesis de pregrado fue sobre el shiismo y la Revolución Iraní. La realicé centrándome, principalmente, en el problema de los iranies no ocidentalizados y como ven amenazada su cultura,dejando para un estudio más pormenorizado la visión de los iranies pro-occidentales.
Marjane, al igual que la cantante Azam Aly, pertenecen al sector de clase media/alta que en ese momento accedían a la cultura occidental y ponían en practicas nuevas formas de convivencia y que por ello debieron dejar su país natal con el cambio de régimen.
Encuentro fascinante el drama cultural-religioso de Irán, algo que sin duda vale la pena estudiar detenidamente,sin juzgar,apreciando todo los puntos de vista.
100% recomendable.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
vashfrieddonuts
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
Me encantó de principio a fin. Esas cosas que tienen los procesos políticos vistos a través de los ojos de niños inteligentes que creen fervientemente en la posibilidad de un futuro mejor. En simultáneo me transmitió una realidad, me informó sobre una historia y me recordó a algunas cosas de mi propia infancia. Con muchas ganas de arrancar el siguiente volumen.
0 0 Reply
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Johnny-Jon
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 26,2025
... Show More
Cartea e excelentă ca prezentate, volumul de la Editura Art se prezintă excelent. singura problemă e faptul că din când în când lipsește către în cuvânt din bulele de dialog. Dar chiar și așa, volumul e excelent
0 0 Reply
Leave a Review
You must be logged in to rate and post a review. Register an account to get started.