Books: Persepolis
by rrusczyk, Aug 11, 2008, 2:14 AM
Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi
At jmerry's recommendation in the comments upon my review of Septembers of Shiraz, I read Persepolis, the story of a young girl in revolutionary times in Iran. The book is a graphic novel, which is a very good medium for telling a tale like this from the point of view of a child. Persepolis still was heavy-handed at times, but this is pretty unavoidable with the topic. Moreover, the medium and the child's POV makes the delivery of the heavy-handed points somehow more appropriate, or at least less intrusive. The child's POV also allows the interjection of more humor and more humanity. Moreover, Persepolis was a lot more effective in conveying a sense of the problems in pre-war Iran (though there are many better sources for this, to be sure). Also, as a graphic novel, it was a very, very quick read.
Above all, this reinforced my sense that Iran was a tough, tough place to be in 1975-1985 (and my sense that stigmatizing them as part of an "Axis of Evil" is probably a mistake on the part of the US -- it's not clear that sabre-rattling is going to achieve anything positive there, but I suppose that even absent the "Axis of Evil" issue, the Iraq War would have provoked the current state of affairs with respect to Iran).
At jmerry's recommendation in the comments upon my review of Septembers of Shiraz, I read Persepolis, the story of a young girl in revolutionary times in Iran. The book is a graphic novel, which is a very good medium for telling a tale like this from the point of view of a child. Persepolis still was heavy-handed at times, but this is pretty unavoidable with the topic. Moreover, the medium and the child's POV makes the delivery of the heavy-handed points somehow more appropriate, or at least less intrusive. The child's POV also allows the interjection of more humor and more humanity. Moreover, Persepolis was a lot more effective in conveying a sense of the problems in pre-war Iran (though there are many better sources for this, to be sure). Also, as a graphic novel, it was a very, very quick read.
Above all, this reinforced my sense that Iran was a tough, tough place to be in 1975-1985 (and my sense that stigmatizing them as part of an "Axis of Evil" is probably a mistake on the part of the US -- it's not clear that sabre-rattling is going to achieve anything positive there, but I suppose that even absent the "Axis of Evil" issue, the Iraq War would have provoked the current state of affairs with respect to Iran).
February 2012
January 2012