Subtitled The Story of a Childhood, this graphic novel (the first in a series of four) is by Marjane Satrapi (1969-2026), and closely mirrors the story of her own life.

It was originally published in French in 2000, but I wasn't able to get hold of that version.

So, I read the English translation, by Mattias Ripa and Blake Ferris. This was published in 2003, and it's available for free at Internet Archive.

I've been meaning to read Persepolis for ages. It was mentioned in Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, and it fits right into my interest in Iran. Once upon a time I used to edit translations of Iranian press material, which was a fascinating way to earn a living. I'm much less au fait with events in the Islamic Republic now, but from those years of poring over day-to-day happenings, I've retained a vivid memory of the "feel" of it all, and the way Iranian politics and society defied all easy stereotypes.

Every now and then, I return to something Iranian, always in the hope of seeing that complexity recaptured. Marjan Kamali's The Stationery Shop of Tehran didn't quite do it; neither did Sanam Mahloudji's The Persians. Then there was Jasmine and Stars, Fatemeh Keshavarz's pushback against Nafisi's Reading Lolita, which attempts to provide a more nuanced picture, but again doesn't quite succeed. Possibly the best Iran-adjacent novel I've read recently is Kaveh Akbar's Martyr!.

Anyway, all that had put Persepolis on my radar, but the catalyst for actually digging it out of the file was Satrapi's death on the 4th of this month...



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Satrapi did an illuminating interview with Simon Hattenstone in 2008. Like Marji, the heroine of Persepolis, she grew up widely read, opinionated, sceptical, and feisty -- not qualities that went down well in the new Islamic Republic. Her parents decided the wisest course -- the best chance of keeping her out of trouble -- was to send her to school in Austria. She was only 14. (This is the point at which Persepolis No. 1 ends.)

Satrapi was never modest: "Part of the problem, she says, is that she was so intelligent, so easily bored by people and their ideas." In another book, she depicts her great-uncle, who was, she says, "completely unbearable, narcissistic, egocentric but also lovely and charming". She goes on: "That's actually how I see myself. You have to be narcissistic to be an artist. You have to think you are the centre of the whole thing; otherwise why do you create? The only thing is to recognise it, and then you make the best of it."

It's perhaps not surprising that she struggled a bit in Europe, too. Living in a boarding house run by nuns was never going to be ideal, and she was eventually thrown out. "At her nadir," says Hattenstone, "she was peddling drugs, homeless, and she almost died from bronchitis. After four years in Vienna, she admitted defeat, put on her veil and returned home."

But being in Iran was no easier. She's 19 by now, and she's stuck between two cultures -- "a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the west". There are suicide attempts, a failed marriage, and then a return to Europe, this time to art school in Strasbourg.

She moved to Paris in 1994, and was based there until her death. But, as this obituary points out, "She wrote frequently about her perpetual sense of dislocation -- living away from her home country, but thinking constantly of it." The obit goes on to quote her words from a 2009 essay: "I call Iran home because no matter how long I live in France, and despite the fact that I feel also French after all these years, to me the word 'home' has only one meaning: Iran... No matter how much I am in love with Paris and its indescribable beauty..., Tehran with all its ugliness will in my eyes forever be the 'bride' of all cities around the world."

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Persepolis itself is immensely engaging. The graphics are black and white, simple but highly expressive, funny and sad at the same time.

We begin in 1980. The Islamic Republic has just introduced the law on "veiling". There are demonstrations for and against. Marji says: "I really didn't know what to think about the veil. Deep down I was very religious but as a family we were very modern and avant-garde. I was born with religion." As a kid, she aspired to be a prophet... And every night she had a big discussion with God, whom she draws as Gandalf-like and kind.


Iran, 2000. Some of us really don't wear scarves well...

These experiences sit alongside a voracious reading habit (including comic strips explaining dialectical materialism...); discussions with her parents (who are very cool); and plenty of observation (why do Mum and Dad talk about equality, but have a Cadillac and a maid...?)


The maid, Mehri, falls in love with the neighbour's son, and pretends to be Marji's sister. Dad eventually has to enlighten him. Note the Bee Gees T-shirt...

But it's a brutal time to grow up in, as the Shah's forces grow ever more ruthless in suppressing the mounting opposition to his rule. A terrible fire at Cinema Rex; "Black Friday"; and then "there was one massacre after another".



The graphics reflect the brutality unflinchingly. And Iran has been suffering for generations. Marji's grandfather was sent to prison because of his communist sympathies. Grandma tells her: "The Shah's father took everything we owned. I lived in poverty."

The Shah eventually departs. Everyone is very happy.



His political prisoners are released. The family knows two of them: Siamak Jari and Mohsen Shakiba.



Again, this child is exposed to some really adult stuff. The two released prisoners talk about the torture they have undergone. There are no-holds-barred illustrations.

It's a confusing world, but God, her "friend", is still her refuge: "I didn't know what justice was. Now that the revolution was finally over once and for all, I abandoned the dialectic materialism of my comic strips. The only place I felt safe was in the arms of my friend."

Then, suddenly, as is the way with revolutions, everything seems to go back to violent Square 1. There's Marji's uncle, Anoosh. He has spent time in prison before, but he is arrested again, and this time executed. Mohsen and Siamak are also killed: "And that is how all the former revolutionaries became the sworn enemies of the Republic."

Marji doesn't want to talk to God any more.

People are leaving Iran, worried about the future. Maybe we should leave too, says Mum. "So that I can become a taxi driver and you a cleaning lady?" responds Dad.

Page after page remind us of the tempests Iranian underwent at that point: The US Embassy siege; the closure of the universities; the introduction of mandatory veiling.

And then the war with Iraq begins. The fighter pilot father of Pardisse, a friend of Marji's, is killed. When their class is given an assignment to write about the war, Marji writes about the historical context, and calls her essay: The Arab Conquest and Our War. "Pardisse's report was by far the best. It was a letter to her father in which she promised to take care of her mother and little brother."



The war grinds on. Shortages. People bombed out of their homes, and staying with family. Resentment against the people who have had to flee. So many "martyrs".



Marji asks her Mum whether all the deaths don't mean anything to her. "'Of course they mean something to me! But we are still living! Our country has always known war and martyrs. So, like my father said: "When a big wave comes, lower your head and let it pass."' That's very Persian. The philosophy of resignation."



They're kids, though. "Every situation offered an opportunity for laughs..."

But Satrapi doesn't skirt round the terrible tragedy of the loss of life during that war with Iraq, and the ghastly kidology that was employed as a recruiting tool (Kaveh Akbar has more on this). The son of Mrs Nasrine, the family's most recent maid, tells them about a plastic key, painted gold: "They gave this to my son at school. They told the boys that if they went to war and were lucky enough to die, this key would get them into heaven." Shahab is Marji's cousin, back on leave from military service (he was sent straight to the front). He also tells them the army is recruiting children. "The key to paradise was for poor people. Thousands of young kids, promised a better life, exploded on the minefields with their keys around their necks."

Meanwhile, life goes on, despite the air raids. Marji is going to punk parties. People secretly brew alcohol. There are still venues to hang out in: "If some public places had survived the regime's repression, either it was to leave us a little free space, or else it was out of ignorance... In spite of everything, kids were trying to look hip, even under risk of arrest." When the borders eventually open, and Mum and Dad holiday in Turkey, they bring back all the loot that Marji has requested (denim jacket, Michael Jackson badge, Nike trainers, Kim Wilde poster...)

And the war grinds on. When they visit Uncle Taher in hospital, they encounter war casualties, including the victims of chemical attacks. The propaganda grinds on, too: "Every day they tell us that we've destroyed ten planes and five tanks. If you start from the beginning of the war, that makes six thousand planes and three thousand tanks destroyed. Even the Americans don't have an army this big."

Suddenly they're facing Scud missiles, one of which hits a house on their street. They know the people who were killed there; Marji sees the aftermath.

It's not surprising, really, that this youngster acts out. She's bright, she's sensitive, and she must be full to the brim with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. The whole nation must have been. There's an incident at school, and Marji hits the principal. Never good... Unsurprisingly, she's expelled. She struggles to find another school; she struggles to knuckle down, and sail under the radar.

Which is why, as we said, she was sent abroad to school. It's a desperately sad ending, despite the hope that it represents. Her parents take her to the airport. "I couldn't bear looking at them there behind the glass. Nothing's worse than saying goodbye. It's a little like dying. I couldn't just go. I turned around to see them one last time."

And she sees, and wishes she hadn't, that her mother has fainted:



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One of the things that Fatemeh Keshavarz objected to about Reading Lolita in Tehran was what she called the "Islamization of wickedness", and she lays out in detail why she thinks Nafisi has provided a uniformly dark picture that leaves no room for anything positive but panders to the expectations of her Western audience: "By and large," she argues, "RLT satisfies mass curiosity and affirms preexisting perceptions. Its central message to the reader, delivered by a member of the native culture, is: Meet the subhumans you always knew were there!"

This is absolutely not an accusation that could be levelled at Persepolis.

In a very moving reflection occasioned by Satrapi's death, Shadi Rouhshahbaz explains: "Satrapi reminded the world that Iranians are not merely subjects of geopolitics or victims of authoritarianism. We have families, friendships, humour, terrible fashion choices, impossible romances and complicated identities. Like all great memoirs, Persepolis made the particular universal. It allowed readers to see themselves in an Iranian girl from Tehran. In doing so, it made it harder to deny our shared humanity. Her art has the kind of charm that allows everyone to see themselves in one corner of it or another."

She continues: "Satrapi’s alternative view of Iran is so compelling because she refuses to romanticise her own country, or to idealise Europe or the West. She rejects both nostalgic nationalism and complete assimilation. Instead, she inhabits the uncomfortable space in between... She critiqued the repression of the Islamic Republic while remaining critical of Western hypocrisy. She condemned fanaticism without embracing cultural superiority."

Firouzeh Nahavandi agrees: "[Satrapi's] work does not simplify Iran; it captures its diversity and tensions. It shows us progressive parents still attached to certain traditions; individuals who circumvent the rules without necessarily rejecting their society; exiles critical of Iran, but sometimes disillusioned with the West; characters who maintain their capacity for laughter amidst repression. One of the great strengths of Persepolis is its simultaneous portrayal of multiple registers of experience. Political repression exists alongside humor. Social constraints never erase individual strategies. Tradition does not preclude the desire for modernity. Conformity exists, but so does dissent. The Iran that emerges from its pages is neither a static country nor a uniform society. These multifaceted aspects of Iranian society contrast sharply with the often reductive images through which Iran is perceived abroad... More than 25 years after its publication, Persepolis remains one of the rare works capable of making Iran intelligible without excusing it, critiquing it without caricaturing it, making it human without idealizing it. This is undoubtedly what explains its enduring relevance."


The heritage the book is named after: Persepolis, as it was in 2000. Founded by Darius I in 518 BCE, and the capital of the Achaemenid Empire

In that 2008 interview, Hattenstone comments: "Persepolis has been dismissed by the Iranian authorities as Islamophobic, but Satrapi says this is ridiculous... While Persepolis is scathing about the hypocrisies and cruelties of Iran's theocracy, she is equally critical of George Bush's Christian fundamentalism. She accuses the west of cultural imperialism, saying it always reduces Iran to Hizbullah or 1001 Arabian Nights; the flying carpet or the flying rocket. What she wanted to do in Persepolis was tell her story and show what it means to be Iranian for her."

At that point, Persepolis had already sold over a million copies and been translated into 24 languages: "What has delighted her is the story's universal appeal -- it's not just about Iran, it's about growing up in any place with problems."


Persepolis was also the site of a lavish party thrown in 1971 by the Shah of Iran to celebrate 2,500 years of the Persian Empire. This event did not endear him to the people, adding fuel to the fire of calls for his departure

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If it appeals to those wanting to know more about Iran, Satrapi's work also appeals to Iranians who, like her, straddle two countries.

Rouhshahbaz comments: "Reading Persepolis at different times of one’s life offers a language for contradictions that often feel impossible to explain: loving one’s country while criticising it, belonging to multiple places while feeling fully accepted by none, and carrying memories across borders that others struggle to understand."

Satrapi doesn't express, says Nahavandi, the grand heroic narrative of exile, but rather its everyday manifestations: "The exile of misunderstandings, cultural differences, and incomprehension. The exile of those who try to find their place in a new society without entirely abandoning their original identity. Persepolis portrays this confrontation between expectations and reality with remarkable accuracy... This dimension may be less visible than her political engagement, yet it is essential. For while Satrapi has allowed Westerners to better understand Iran, she has also offered many exiles tools to reflect on their own paths. In her own way, she has built a bridge in both directions."

Rouhshahbaz also puts her finger on another key element: "Persepolis is equally about leaving behind familiarity and home. Throughout, family becomes both refuge and history. In one of the book’s most moving sections, Satrapi’s beloved Uncle Anoosh tells her, 'Our family memory must not be lost.'... But the significance of this moment extends beyond the boundaries of any single household. In authoritarian contexts, where states often seek to monopolise history and memory, families become custodians of alternative narratives. In stories passed down by parents, grandparents and relatives, Satrapi preserves memories of political imprisonment, resistance -- and hope that official accounts might prefer to erase."

At the close of her Introduction, Satrapi writes: "One can forgive but one should never forget." And Dad's final words, as Marji sets off alone to Austria, are: "Don't forget who you are and where you come from."

She didn't.



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Anyone familiar with book-banning in the United States will probably not be surprised to learn that Persepolis has been the subject of challenges about its inclusion in libraries and on school curricula. "'I take the book's banning as a huge compliment,' writes Satrapi in her introduction to the 20th anniversary edition..."

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In all, an enjoyable and enlightening experience. I look forward to reading the rest of the series.