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| Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood & The Story of a Return: v. 1 & v. 2 | 
 enlarge | Author: Marjane Satrapi
Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
Buy New: £7.82
You Save: £7.17 (48%)
New (25) from £7.82
Avg. Customer Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 7289
Media: Paperback
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0224080393
EAN: 9780224080392
ASIN: 0224080393
Publication Date: July 6, 2006
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 A comic strip for all ages December 26, 2007
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
This book traces the life of young girl growing up in turbulent times in Iran, beginning with life under the Shah, moving on to the revolution and continuing through the Iran / Iraq war. The girl narrates anecdotes from her own life that provide a thought-provoking window onto the way these events affected ordinary individuals. The choice of a comic strip to portray events of such significance and tragedy has some disadvantages, one being the limits it places on the possibilities of characterization. On the other hand, there are also numerous advantages. The illustrations can at times be quite powerful, the simplicity of the format is used effectively to highlight the stark brutality and poignancy of the events portrayed, and perhaps above all, the graphic novel format makes a story with such important themes accessible to people of all ages.
 A fantastic read October 16, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It does not make sense but Marjane Satrapi's decision to recount her memoir about growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution using a comic strip actually renders the tale more rather than less poignant. Her artwork propels the reader so quickly through the horrors which have accompanied each recent regime change in Iran that the impact is maximised. It also proves to be the right medium to represent the quickened loss of innocence which Satrapi experiences as a result.
Satrapi herself is revealed as a spirited teenage rebel not averse to confrontation with her own parents and to her credit these encounters are candidly, and often comically, repeated no matter how self-absorbed they reveal her to have been.
This is a must read.
Informative, beautiful, compelling September 11, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a wonderful book: it taught me more about the situation inside Iran than decades of newspapers and TV coverage have done, and at the same time it proved a compelling autobiography, very moving in parts, which I found it hard to put down.
(PS, I'm not sure why Jacques Coulardeau is reviewing the movie adaptation of this book rather than the book itself. Judging a book by the movie based upon it is never a good idea, and calling the true story of somebody's life "too light" is just rude and slightly ludicrous).
Too light on such a serious subject August 4, 2007
1 out of 13 found this review helpful
I was really expecting the film adaptation of this book and I have finally seen it. It is one of the greatest disappointments I have lived in a movie-theater for quite a while, all the more because I was expecting a lot from it. But I shoul have known better in a way. The subject is too serious to be treated so lightly, yes lightly. What are her father and mother doing in Iran for them to have that much money, that comfort if not luxury, that durability that enables them to survive all regimes, all revolutions, all coup d'etat, when it is not simple religious putsches, and where did they get the money to enable her to live for several years in Vienna? The whole film becomes a collection of cliches, most of them purely existential. Let me give a couple. Cliche, the quotation of Lenin or Bakunin or some other names that bring nothing to the mind. Cliche, her boyfriend in Vienna who discovers he is gay and the relation is finished because of it: you have to be seriously concentrating on sex and only sex to make friends with someone and drop him as soon as he discovers himself unable to fulfill the sexual part of the relation. What about his personality, his originality? What about love and friendship in all that? Then the next one is seen in two directions and each one is a cliche: on one side he is a saint who ends up in bed with another girl; on the other side he is a monster who exploited the girl all along. She sure was a sucker and a dummy. But what does it bring to the film, to the story, to the ideas the film conveys, if it conveys any articulated idea? The point is not to say that the West sold weapons to both Iran and Iraq. That's normal since we are in a market economy and business is business: if I don't sell my weapons, my neighbor will sell his. So, what must I do? After all a French exocet missile was very effective in the Falkland Islands war in the 1980s ... against the English. If Kellog refuses to sell his corn flakes to me, I will buy the corn flakes of any other brand. But what were the causes of this war? Why did Iran and Iraq manage to start a war between them two instead of finding a normal solution through discussions and negotiations? The film seems to express some kind of nostalgia for the good old days when there were two clear cut sides. Unluckily the old USSR has disappeared, but not one word about the support Iran provided, along with the CIA among others, to the anti-soviet fighters in Afghanistan. This film is simplistic but it deals with extremely important issues, so it does not have the right to be that simplistic. Politics cannot be reduced to that superficiality. And the future of Iran is not in Paris. It is Tehran.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine & University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne
A graphic memoir to remember March 14, 2007
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
In the midst of the Iranian Islamic Revolution a young girl is growing up and struggling to reconcile her rebellion and the fate of her family with the constrains of the new regime. These graphic novels are vital to our times, in writing about her experiences in such personal detail, Satrapi paints a picture of a multicoloured, diverse and varied society in which the similarities to our own far outweigh any differences. But above contemporary significance sits a hilarious and wonderfully human story. A rarely found gem in which the authors honesty about her own past only serves to make her all the more likable.
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