Satrapi’s Persepolis was among the first and finest memoirs about post-Revolution Iran, and is still incredibly relevant more than a quarter century after its 2000 publication. The two-part work—which Satrapi preferred to call a “comic book” instead of a graphic novel—followed “Marji” as she grew up in the eighties in Iran, studied in Europe, and returned to Iran before leaving in the mid-nineties for Paris, where she lived until her death. From the first page, Satrapi questions and lampoons the antediluvian and Draconian policies of the Islamic Republic, particularly with respect to women. As a schoolgirl, she loathes the headscarf, and, under the influence of her progressive mother and sage grandmother, matures into a young woman passionate about freedom, social justice, and calling out hypocrisy wherever she encounters it. “I didn’t even think that people would read it,” she told me in a 2017 podcast interview. “I was like, you know, who would be interested in that?”
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