My Goodreads Review of Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi

This is another one of thoughs books that sticks with you long after reading it, specifically the last page. Like the ending of One Day I Will Write about This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina, I can't quite stop thinking about it.

The Complete Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

آزادی به حال قیمت - Last sentence of the book (in Google-dialect Persian).

Growing-up a strong-willed girl during the Cold War was hard, but if you also happened to have lived in Iran during and after the 1979 Revolution then it was really hard. This book documents the life and times of Marjane Satrapi from around 1978 to 1995-96. She was part of a family of ex-royals that became Iranian Marxists who helped oust the Shah, then after the Iranian Revolution became the Islamic Revolution her parents' friends and even her family members found themselves being purged by the new Islamic Republic of Iran...and then things get bad when Iran & Iraq go to war. She goes to Austria as a refugee for awhile...and then things get really crazy for her. This story is almost like some sort-of Charles Dickens-type of story in its theme and scope.

I don't know if Persepolis started the trend I've noticed in recent years of the Middle-Eastern themed graphic-memiors like the works of Zeina Abirached & Riad Sattouf, but it is the oldest-known work of this genre that I know of. I certainly see how this book influenced the story-telling and look of books like I Remember Beirut and Sattouf's The Arab of the Future series (the fact that all three of them eventually settled permanently in France probably helps). I have really been anticipating reading this graphic novel for a year-and-a-half and am glad that it met expectations (though I selfishly wished it had been longer). This book has me now hungry for more books to read of this kind.

Again what James Baldwin said about the power of books is still true.

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