Persepolis - Biography

I can't claim to be any kind of expert on graphic novels - those I have read have tended to be of the fantasy/alternate reality world that have been mined so frequently for big budget action/effects movies recently. Persepolis is a very different kind of graphic novel, and I've never read anything like it. It's an autobiography of an Iranian girl called Marji, telling her story from childhood through her teenage years to young adulthood. As a young girl Marji lives through the Iranian revolution and then grows up in the post-revolutionary world, through the Iran-Iraq war under a totalitarian regime imposing an ever harsher and restrictive ...  Read the complete review

Not being up on the lingo of comic books and graphic novels, I can't say whether this is either, both or something else entirely. I can say, though, that this is the autobiographical tale of Marjane Satrapi's childhood in Iran. From the ousting of the Shah and the Revolution, through the war with Iraq, up to Marji's leaving of her country at the end of the 80s, we see this slice of history through the eyes of a child and in terms of the effect it has on her family. Although Marji is in many ways what we would think of as a normal child - a mildly rebellious music lover, amongst other things, this normality brings her into conflict with the regime of her ...  Read the complete review

Just occasionally, a graphic novel comes along that reminds everyone that this is an artform with huge potential, just as capable of delivering the same complexity and emotional depth as a novel. Art Spiegelman's Maus was one such comic, Persepolis is another. Persepolis is the story of Marji, a young girl. In every conceivable way, she's an ordinary teenager - she likes rock music, and hanging out at the mall with her friends. At home, her parents are educated, tolerant, secular, upper class professionals. However, her family happens to live in Iran, in the period after the Islamic Revolution, when religious elements were in the ascendancy and war with ...  Read the complete review