Arab Literary Travels

Ruby Packenham-Behan: Background

Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran in 1969 and raised in the capital Tehran. Currently, she is a French citizen, and her graphic novel depicts her experience growing up in Iran set against the backdrop of the Iran-Iraq war. Growing up, Satrapi was part of a politically active household. Both her parents considered themselves as Marxists and supported the 1979 Iranian Revolution that came prior to the war. The revolution was a nationalist revolution in which the Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini overthrew the dictator monarchy of Iran among criticism of social injustice and westernisation. Persepolis shows Marji and her family as the Islamic Fundamentalist state takes over and how they deal with the repercussions of being connected to the Marxist ideals, in particular, those of her Uncle Anoosh.
The title of the book is interesting in itself, 'Persepolis' is a reference to the ancient capital of the Persian Achaemenid Empire and a direct translation to 'the Persian city'. The title seems fitting, almost as a reference to the changing environment of Iran, which was once a Persian Empire, but now exists as a pile of ruins being named a World Heritage Site in 1972. In her novel, Marjane Satrapi depicts her witnessing the fall of Iranian Monarchy and the transformation into the Islamic State of Iran, relating to the decay of the Persian empire. By naming the novel Persepolis it is almost as if Satrapi is mourning her version of Iran. With this in mind, I think it makes it even more interesting to map visually the changing of Iran and the accompanying ideologies involved. 

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