It was short, but our time together was just wonderful. I don't think it was as focused and fleshed out like Persepolis, but I don't fault Marjane for it. Persepolis was a personal story that Marjane LIVED, Chicken with Plums is also a very personal story, but it's about events well before her time. It's incredible she was able to weave such a compelling personal tale, with what was probably second hand information. Scraps here and there from different people, all of a man she never knew; and yet she writes him with an honesty that can only come with actually knowing someone.

I feel her art here is brilliantly utilized more so than in Persepolis......at peak moments(mainly the transitions between the chapters). Overall though there isn't much going on. Again though it's hard to find fault with Marjane, this is a character driven tale and unfortunately the character is confined to his room.

If you've read Persepolis, don't go in expecting it to be Persepolis. Pacing here is very quick and very immediate. It's a story of highs and lows, not in the sense that it's about highs and lows per se but in the sense that the pacing and artwork sort of intertwine and work against each other from page to page creating a chaotic mix of despair and frustration that forces you through each painful page. Boredom is never part of the equation though, as this is a deeply human tale grounded in primal emotions that we all experience.

Persepolis was a tale of overcoming adversity and is a celebration of the tenacity of the human spirit.

Chicken with Plums is an altogether different experience. It's about acceptance and ends and is a meditation on the frailty of the human will to live.

Marjane Marjane the more I read the more I love you!

Angsty! I thought this would be light and fun like Embroideries but this is not that book! A lovely, poignant story, though.

Con este libro, culmino mi ciclo de fangirleo con Marjane Satrapi. El siguiente paso será ver sus películas. Entrar al universo creativo de esta artista en este verano ha sido una experiencia increíble y me ha encantado poder cerrar esta etapa con Pollo con ciruelas.

Es imposible imaginarme que una persona considere este el mejor libro de la autora. En eso estamos de acuerdo. Persépolis es, con gran distancia, su mejor obra, claramente la más pensada, la mejor construida. Sin embargo, leer Pollo con ciruelas es una sorpresa, porque, en pocas páginas, he sentido una conexión indescriptible con su personaje. Eso solo se logra con talento, un talento distinto del que noto en Persépolis.

Pollo con ciruelas cuenta la historia de Nasser Alí, un hombre iraní que vive en Teherán. En una discusión con su esposa, esta le rompe su tar (instrumento musical de cuerdas), el cual le había pertenecido durante años. Este hecho le destroza el corazón, porque se da cuenta de que ningún tar en el mundo va a poder reemplazar al suyo y, como la música es su vida y no volverá a tocar, decide encerrarse en su habitación a esperar la muerte. ¿Intenso, no? Debido a este encierro, regresará a momentos pasados de su vida y se dará cuenta de que sus pocas ganas de vivir no se deben exclusivamente a lo ocurrido con su tar.

Esta viaje retrospectivo del personaje nos lleva a los lectores a, inevitablemente, pensar también en nuestras propias vidas, poner todo en balanza, lo bueno y lo malo, para entender si, a pesar de que lo malo predomina, nos sentiríamos igual que Nasser, desdichados al punto de llamar a la muerte cuando aún no nos toca. Esto no se trata de un llamamiento al suicidio. Es algo menos, mucho menos oscuro que eso. Es simplemente tratar de entender a una persona que puede ser real en nuestro mundo, tan desdichado, tan miserable, tan desesperanzado, tan tan triste, que siente que tiene derecho, al menos, a desear morir. ¿Somos capaces de respetar y entender eso?

Lean Pollo con ciruelas sin esperar encontrar en sus páginas el nivel de Persépolis y verán cómo disfrutan de esta historia que a mí me ha dejado con el corazón un poco herido.

An interesting read. I really like Marajane Satrapi I want to read the rest of her books.

After Embroideries, I had grown pretty skeptical of Marjane Satrapi's ability to follow-up Persepolis. I'm glad I finally gave this book a shot. A nicely done, tight little story about one man and the reverberations his life and his passing have throughout his family.

I've been meaning to read this for so long and finally have, in the most unexpected of situations. While at a bookshop killing time and longing for books I can't afford (not until the next paycheck comes) I saw this and immediately picked it up because I've been so curious about it for so long and had never seen it in real life. I was just going to take a look at the first few pages but I was so enthralled by it that I read the whole thing then and there. I don't think I ever read a whole book while standing in a bookstore before, but one page led to another and before I knew it, it was finished. Well, after so many years of being interested in this story about a man who loses the desire to live after having his tar broken, there was just no way that the real thing could have lived up to my wild expectations, and that's ok. But still, it's pretty great. Although I haven't exactly researched the veracity of this story, it's clear Marjane took many liberties with her great uncle's thoughts. But just to imagine that this was a little family tale that she weaved into such a heartbreaking narrative is proof enough of her genius. What is life without love and without music? Without the one thing you carry close to your heart to get you through everything else? Nothing worth living for, surely. Some losses are just too devastating, and this is a beatiful little book that demonstrates that the most devastating ones sometimes are invisible to others. And I fully intend to purchase it next month!

É um belo conto de maneira geral, mas a normatividade perversa em alguns trechos é de lascar e não tem nada que abomine mais do que gente normativa em qualquer segmento, especialmente literatura.

O desgosto é uma experiência que gera mágoa desconstrutiva do contentamento e da certeza. (Da Esperança, portanto.)
O desgosto pode ser uma minudência ou um colosso. E num ou noutro caso pode ser ignorado com a força da rotina e/ou da prossecução da «normalidade» da vida. Até não se poder - ou querer - mais.
E é nesse evento de lhe ceder que se desencaixam os níveis e densidades diversos dessa experiência humana que é morte da esperança.
Agora imagine-se isto em narrativa familiar. E por fim em arte sequencial de influência franco-belga com um uso generoso do negrume da tinta-da-china e a alvura das suas delimitações, num traço seguro e fluído que relata os últimos dias de um músico iraniano nos 1950's.

4,5*. À primeira vista, é possível que vos pareça que carece de profundidade. Porém, quando se pára para refletir...que mensagem poderosa!

Fiquei apaixonada pelo trabalho da Marjane Satrapi após ler (e ver o filme!) do “Persépolis”, há muitos anos atrás. “Frango com ameixas” é muito diferente, e não desilude. Ou como se lê no prefácio da edição portuguesa que tive em mãos:

“Na verdade, é em termos narrativos que melhor se revela o amadurecimento e o crescimento autoral de Marjane Satrapi, que gere com mestria os tempos da narração através de diálogos curtos mas assertivos, pontuando-a com poesia, humor e nostalgia.

A forma como o ponto de vista vai mudando sucessivamente ao longo do livro - espelhando o desfecho da fábula do elefante narrada nele - vai prendendo o leitor, levando-o a querer lê-lo até ao fim, apesar deste já estar anunciado, o que não impede uma conclusão mesmo assim surpreendente.”

Наполовину автобиографичная история, наполовину притча о том, как у дяди Маржан сломался любимый музыкальный инструмент и после безуспешных попыток найти ему замену дядя, женатый мужчина с тремя детьми, решает просто лечь и умереть.

В отличие от "Персеполиса", здесь почти нет социо-политической составляющей, при этом рассказ ведётся со всё тем же характерным для авторши (и восточных сказок) мягким юмором, простыми жизненными эмоциями в бытовых и семейных сценках и наглядным символизмом.

В целом прекрасное дополнение к "Персеполису", очень нам понравилось. Вот, как обычно, небольшая фотогалерея.

It's easy to be disappointed in this book if you expect something of the scale and depth of the author's "Persepolis." But Satrapi has set out to tell a different kind of story in this book, and judging by that, I'd say she has come much closer to succeeding than some reviews here might suggest. Telling her story twice, first from an outsider's point of view and then from the perspective of the main character, Satrapi gives a postmodern twist to her material. And filling in what were surely the scant details of a life she could only have known second- or third-hand, she joins a well-established genre of creative nonfiction.

If the book can be faulted, it's that the material is so rich and cries out for much fuller treatment. In its few pages, you want to know more about these characters so that they spring in three dimensions from the flat comic-strip world they inhabit. This may have more to do with the limitations of the graphic novel than Satrapi's storytelling itself. I have no reservations recommending this book for what it reveals of lives lived in a culture that is both familiar and very different and its comically sad story of a self-absorbed man so disappointed with his world that he wills his own death.