A Powerful Autobiographical Tale in Graphic Novel Form, January 15, 2008

By 

Steve Koss (New York, NY United States) –

  

  

THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS brings together in one softbound volume two graphic novels published earlier in English (translated from French): PERSEPOLIS 1 – THE STORY OF A CHILDHOOD, and PERSEPOLIS 2 – THE STORY OF A RETURN. As a single volume, Ms. Satrapi’s work reads as a seamless story of an Iranian woman’s maturation from a young girl in the Shah’s (and Ayatollah Khomeini’s) Iran to her high school years in Austria, back to the Iran attacked by Saddam Hussein and then transformed into a fundamentalist Islamic state, and finally back again to Europe as a young adult. The book’s title is borrowed from the name of ancient Persia’s ceremonial capital, dating back some 2,500 years, although Persepolis is in fact the Greek translation of the original Persian name, Parsa.

The story is strictly autobiographical, rendered as a memoir of childhood and young adulthood. Satrapi begins her story at age ten, the daughter of well-educated and well-off parents who put a premium on their daughter’s religious and academic independence. Marjane’s parents prod their pre-adolescent daughter toward a liberal education and encourage her to speak out. However, being a rebel against oppression in Iran leads inevitably to trouble and expulsion from school. Her parents recourse is to pack young Marjane off to Austria, isolated and alone in a foreign and far more secular culture. A series of mostly negative experiences leads her back to her homeland and an unsuccessful marriage during the early years of Iran’s fundamentalist revolution with its growing religious oppression. When the young adult Marjane and her parents finally realize that her future lies not in Iran but in Europe, she heads off to France where she still lives today.

Ms. Satrapi characterizes herself as the perennial outsider wherever she lives. As a young girl, political and religious events contradict her upbringing and isolate her from the accepted beliefs and behaviors. The author conveys her childhood desperation by repeated depictions of herself talking to an ancient, white-bearded God, even cradled in his arms. She is even more the outsider in Austria, forever fumbling in her discoveries of Western culture only to become enslaved by some of its worst features. Returning to Iran after her high school years, Marjane is too Westernized to be Iranian, yet still too Iranian to feel Western. The author’s journey to self-discovery and finding her true home serves as the core of her story, punctuated by her departures and arrivals. In fact, some of the most dramatic scenes in THE COMPLETE PERSEPOLIS take place at airports.

Satrapi’s black-and-white cartooning emphasizes contrast over detail. Indeed, her drawings of people are exceedingly simplified, lacking in all except the basic features necessary to portray a character. This simplicity works, as it stands in stark contrast to the complexity of Iran’s constantly changing social, political, and religious structures as well as the complexity of the author’s own life and the choices she faced. These minimalist renderings, hardly more detailed than Schulz’s “Peanuts” characters, create an even greater dissonance when their childlike simplicity clashes with the horrors of war and the Iranian government’s seizures and executions of many of its citizens. The reader is so effectively lulled into this seemingly benign, comic book world that Satrapi’s occasional dropping of an expletive into her character’s thoughts or words has the force of a slap in the face. When young Marjane returns home to see the dead, braceleted arm of one of her neighborhood friends (killed by one of Saddam Hussein’s missiles) extending from her wrecked home, the author resorts to the powerful simplicity of a completely black panel captioned, “No scream in the world could have relieved my suffering and my anger.”

There is a natural temptation to compare PERSEPOLIS to Art Spiegelman’s MAUS I and MAUS II. However, I believe the Maus books are sui generis, allegorical tales whose use of mice and cats puts Spiegelman’s books in a class of their own. By contrast, Satrapi’s PERSEPOLIS novels are autobiographical volumes rendered in illustrated form to trace an Iranian woman’s struggle to find herself while still loving a country from which she feels irretrievably estranged. Satrapi’s and Spiegelman’s work complement one another and demonstrate the emotional power graphical novels are increasingly finding ways to achieve.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment

Persepolis: both hilarious and deeply moving, February 24, 2008

Last weekend I had the joy of seeing the film adaptation of the comic book series PERSEPOLIS by Marjane Satrapi. I loved the film. I knew though that I was missing out some key points of Marjane’s life so I decided to check out the complete version of PERSEPOLIS in paperback. Although the book is in the form of a graphic novel, the story is a memoir of Marjane Satrapi’s life growing up in Iran as well as outside of Iran. I also got the impression that the story is a love letter to Marjane’s late grandmother who was a huge influence on Marjane as a young woman. People can nitpick at the details of life in Iran during and after the reign of the Shah that Marjane has written in the book but lets keep this in perspective that this book is not a tome on Iran but an autobiography told from the personal point of view from the author. She told what life was like in Iran through her young, impressionable eyes.

Like the Oscar-nominated film, PERSEPOLIS is told with a lot of humor, sadness, and often anger. I could not put the book down. I found myself deeply engrossed in Marjane’s life as as child as well as an adult. I enjoyed the animation. I liked how fluid the shapes of the characters flowed. If you have seen the film adaptation of PERSEPOLIS, the book version is definitely worth reading. There is quite a bit of information from Marjane’s life that just couldn’t fit into the time constraints of the film.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment

Exciting, Inventive, and Insightful, June 5, 2012

By 

Michael J. Whinihan “designated polymath” (Troy, Michigan) –

  

  

The story starts with an episode that seems to come from the world of the “The Thousand and One Nights”. It continues with a story about a teen age computer hacker in a Mideast emirate who protects his clients from state security agents. It turns into a skillful blend of ancient fantasy and an action novel set in the 21st century.

Like a good murder mystery, the seemingly slow early chapters include important clues about the upcoming crisis. The plot skillfully builds tension and culminates in a really scary confrontation between the hero and his friends with both human and non-human enemies.

The story includes several strong female characters. Several characters are devout Muslims and one of the main characters is an old, holy sheik in charge of a major mosque. The hero tries to avoid offending a pious female friend and he changes from being irreligious to a man who prays at least when his life is in danger.

And we learn much about Arab culture including clothes, food, customs, and racial, ethnic, and gender attitudes. Moreover, we see the hero’s character develop as he finds his usual reactions are insufficient to save his life or to protect his friends. Finally, some of the descriptions of places and monsters are absolutely amazing.

Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 

Was this review helpful to you? 

|

 Comment