The complete Persepolis

Comics and graphic novels

First published: 2007
Print length: 352 pagesPantheon Books, 2007

Description

Marjane Satrapi recounts her childhood and early adulthood against the upheavals that transform Iran after the Islamic Revolution. Within a loving Tehran family, political change invades school, clothing, speech, and daily behavior, widening the divide between private convictions and public conformity. As violence and repression reshape the lives around her, Satrapi tries to understand events with the bluntness, humor, and vulnerability of a young witness. Her coming-of-age continues through high school in Vienna, a return to Iran, and eventual exile in France, each move altering her sense of home and belonging. Told as an autobiographical graphic-novel series, Persepolis connects intimate family experience with revolution, migration, cultural conflict, and the struggle to form an independent identity amid social chaos.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Conversational · Direct · Witty

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Dark · Humorous · Intimate · Reflective

Structure

Chronological nonfiction

Focus

Character · Ideas · Relationships

Emotional intensity

4 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 3 / 5
Structure: 2 / 5
Background knowledge: 2 / 5

Themes

Coming of ageFamilyIdentityMigration and displacementOppressionSurvival

About Marjane Satrapi

Marjane Satrapi was an Iranian-born French artist, author, and filmmaker whose work moved between comics and cinema. She became internationally known through Persepolis, an autobiographical account of childhood and early adulthood amid revolution, war, and political repression in Iran. Its stark black-and-white drawings and direct, often witty narration set private family life against public demands for conformity. Satrapi’s method was grounded in the union of writing and drawing; she valued images for conveying emotion that could feel overstated in prose. She also resisted speaking as a historian or political authority, using the limits of lived experience to make large events intelligible through one person’s changing understanding of them. Although she preferred the term “comic book” to “graphic novel,” her career ranged well beyond the page. She co-directed the film adaptation of Persepolis and directed Radioactive, a biographical film about Marie Curie, while works such as Chicken with Plums extended her practice of joining intimate stories to broader social worlds.

Book details

For the print edition listed above.

Publisher: Pantheon Books
Language: English
ISBN: 9780375714832

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