Persepolis

Persepolis

Satrapi, M. (2003). Persepolis. New York: Pantheon Books.

Persepolis is an autobiography of a young Iranian girl, Marjane Sartrapi, growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution.  Set as a graphic novel, this book vividly portrays the daily life of Sartrapi as she grows from a little girl into a young woman in the home of forward thinking parents during a time and in a place where thinking such as this could get you killed.  As the reader discovers over the course of the novel, many of the people Marjane knows and loves are imprisoned and even killed for their opposition to the government suppression of the Iranian people.  As Marjane grows up, she experiences her own personal battle between doing what she knows to be in keeping with her parents’ values and what she as an individual wants.  Eventually, after a close call when a bomb detonates near her home and several other close calls for Marjane herself, her parents decide to send her away to Austria in order to be safe and removed from the strife of her homeland.  Persepolis would be an excellent novel to use to learn about the Iranian culture in a World History class with high school students and could even lend itself to some middle school students because of its graphic format.  Satrapi has written a follow-up novel titled Persepolis 2.