Despite this, Satrapi and her well-educated
parents had a comfortable life in a better
part of town, where she also attended the Lycée Français,
one of the best
schools in Tehran. All of this changed when the Shah was overthrown,
much to
the relief of her family and thousands of others across the country.
The
oversight here was that although the liberal left sided with the
extreme
religious right to help overthrow a puppet regime put in place by
the west,
the atrocities that were to follow would by far worse than the former
regime. In fact, the leftists that are locked up in prison under
the Shah's
regime are later released during the Islamic Revolution, only to
be
recaptured and brutally executed. Satrapi's family were idealists--like
most
young intellectuals of that time--they wanted a government that
represented
the people, not one that spent the country's lavish wealth on parties
for
foreign heads of state, while an oil-rich nation drowned in illiteracy
and
poverty. But sadly, the revolutionaries soon discovered that by
fighting
side by side with the radical right they were now out of the frying
pan, and
into the fire--often quite literally.
Satrapi portrays the events that happened to her
and her family vividly
through pictures and straight forward text.The novel was first printed
in
French (Satrapi now makes her home in Paris) and was published in
an
American edition in May 2003 by Pantheon. "Persepolis"
has sold more than
120,000 copies in France and has been translated from French into
six
languages. The American edition combines the first two volumes of
this
four-part ongoing series, with the sequel due out in 2004. It's
hard to
believe that the book wasn't originally written in English, as it
translates
so beautifully, with none of its pathos or humor being lost in the
translation. Obviously, this is Satrapi's story as intended for
the world,
not just a small minority of Persian society, and the fact that
her book is
doing so well and has been translated into numerous languages is
evidence
that her story is universal--no matter what the language.
Ultimately, even though the religious fundamentalists
take control of the
country, Satrapi never gives up hope once. She is forced to quit
attending
the Lycée Français as it is co-educational, and placed
in an all girls
school, with a heavy emphasis on religion--not by her parents, but
by the
state. To add insult to injury, the young girls are forced to cover
their
hair by wearing a veil, as one by one, all of the individual freedoms
of
everyday people disappear.
Satrapi, like many others, has members of her family
tortured, jailed and
executed for being politically opposed to the restrictive regime.
But with
her world of innocence turned upside down, this girl still has the
guts to
rebel a little here and a little there. Her tale therefore does
not become
one of grief and sorrow, but one of humor as she turns tragedy into
absurdity. Unfortunately, just when she and countless others were
starting
to becoming "used" to the restrictions of their daily
lives, and learning to
cope in order to survive, the Iran/Iraq war happened, killing thousands
upon
thousands of teenage boys and young men, ripping families apart,
and killing
innocent civilians as Saddam continued to bomb Tehran.
What Satrapi has to say is moving, and significant.
Hers is the voice of a
young Iranian woman who has been savaged by the rape of her homeland
and
consequently, her life, but has lived to tell us about it. This
is the voice
of our generation. Although Marjane Satrapi did a whirlwind book
tour in the
States, I missed her Los Angeles appearance by one week. I wanted
to write
about Persepolis in my "Around Town" column even though
Marjane Satrapi is
no longer "around town," her book is. Please ask for it
at your local
bookstore.
About the Author
Marjane Satrapi was born in 1969 in Rasht, Iran. She grew up in
Tehran,
where she studied at the Lycée Français before leaving
for Vienna and then
going to Strasbourg to study illustration. She currently lives in
Paris,
where she is at work on the sequel to Persepolis and where her illustrations
appear regularly in newspapers and magazines. She is also the author
of
several children's books.
|
.gif){kind=spacer}
