Wednesday, June 22, 2016

Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi


Stories like Satrapi's are common and have been told before.  Like Satrapi many were old enough to remember but young enough to really make sense of the events of 1979 Iranian Revolution.  And a few have written about it, Daila Sofer. It seems to me that there is demand to hear about the events of those years; books written on the topic are popular in print and yield lucrative business for film adaptations.  So, more of the same keeps popping.  The question that has come to my mind more than once is had the authors of these books not been part of this historical event, would they be writers today?
Perspolis is yet another one of these stories that belongs to the same "genre".  It tells a story of a girl, the author, who lived the events during and after the revolution.  Her story, like the rest, is dominated by her experiences of those years which is shaped by her family's social status.
What I am trying to say here is, this book doesn't offer anything new, if you have read September's of Shiraz, for example.
The only unique thing is it is illustrated. The illustration however make the story and the characters in it more colorful.

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